This is a little complicated, so bare with me please

I had WinXP, .NET 2.0, IIS 5.1, VS2005, SQL2000, SLQEXPRESS
All this ran without any problems at all.

I needed to upgrade to SQL2005.

So....I installed SQL2005 to discover that the install order is very important. So I uninstalled, VS2005, SQL2000, SQLEXPRESS.

I reinstalled SQL2005, VS2005 and this is where my problems began.
First IIS was on a go slow, so I reinstalled IIS.

Now I have 2 problems:

1. ASPX pages that were fine in VS2005 before are giving me syntax errors, for example:
   <td width="1"> Tooltip says: Validation (XHTML 1.0 Transidtional) Attribute 'width' is considered outdated. A newer construct is recommended. Why is this happening now - I haven't changed the pages since before all this installing/uninstalling.
   
   
2. When I try to go to a local site and show index.aspx, I get this:
   

   The XML page cannot be displayed

   Cannot view XML input using XSL style sheet. Please correct the error and then click the Refresh button, or try again later.

   ---

   A name was started with an invalid character. Error processing resource 'http://localhost/nameofsite/'. Line 1, Positi...

   <%@ Page Language="VB" AutoEventWireup="false" CodeFile="index.aspx.vb" Inherits="index"  Debug="true"%>
   -^

1. This error is correct.  XHTML, the new standard for html, does not allow the 'width' attribute in a table cell.  Instead, use something like <td style="width:50px;"></td>.  This is probably happening only now because you reinstalled Visual Studio.  There are settings you can change that will ignore this error, if you go into Tools->Properties, and navigate to the HTML editor section.

2.  This error occurs because asp.net was uninstalled.  You either need to reconfigure this site to use ASP.NET 2.0/1.x (depending on what it was to begin with), or, if the ASP.NET tab is unavailable or does not have the correct version, you need to re-register asp.net with IIS.

To re-register, open a command window (Start->Run, enter "cmd" and hit ok), and enter the following 

"%systemroot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\YOUR_VERSION\aspnet_regiis.exe" - i

(note that the -i is still typed, it is just outside the double quotes.)

Replace YOUR_VERSION with the correct version of asp.net that you want to register.  Also, make sure you register them in order (if not already done so when installing visual studio), 1.0.x, 1.1.x, 2.0.x

thank you, thank you ps2goat. I feel like I've been fighting fires all day and finally getting somewhere now!!

I thought I had been complying with the latest XHTML standards, but I guess not!!!