Why do you receive a 404 when trying to visit Default.aspx on your SharePoint Site ( among other multiple reasons) ? Answer ( among other potential answers ) :) The site might reside at the root of a Wildcard inclusion managed path. EX: Webapplication...

Consider the following scenario: You have deployed a number of solutions on your Sharepoint Site. During the time, you deactivate the solutions, delete them, add new ones, and so on. For unknown reasons, some of the solutions still remain in the database...

Here's one behavior that you might see. Since the error is not that enlightening and the logs do not tell you what happens, I thought it's usefull to document it. You have configured your farm and attempt to browse to the site you created. Instead...