403 error when going to Drupal site's /admin page - windows

Question

I have a frustrating issue here. Not really sure what is causing it. My Drupal site is running on a Windows server with IIS 7. When I go to the http://example.com/admin page I get a 403 error. However, if I login with http://example.com/?q=user then go to /admin it works fine. I'm guessing there's something wrong with a setting in IIS or there's some kind of permission that is wrong. There is no admin directory in my site's root directory, so its not a case of a rogue folder screwing things up. Any ideas??
Here is my web.config..
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
<system.webServer>
<!-- Don't show directory listings for URLs which map to a directory. -->
<directoryBrowse enabled="false" />
<rewrite>
<rules>
<rule name="Protect files and directories from prying eyes" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="\.(engine|inc|info|install|make|module|profile|test|po|sh|.*sql|theme|tpl(\.php)?|xtmpl)$|^(\..*|Entries.*|Repository|Root|Tag|Template)$" />
<action type="CustomResponse" statusCode="403" subStatusCode="0" statusReason="Forbidden" statusDescription="Access is forbidden." />
</rule>
<rule name="Force simple error message for requests for non-existent favicon.ico" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="favicon\.ico" />
<action type="CustomResponse" statusCode="404" subStatusCode="1" statusReason="File Not Found" statusDescription="The requested file favicon.ico was not found" />
</rule>
<!-- Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'. -->
<rule name="Short URLs" stopProcessing="true">
<match url="^(.*)$" ignoreCase="false" />
<conditions>
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" />
<add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" />
<add input="{URL}" pattern="^/favicon.ico$" ignoreCase="false" negate="true" />
<!--<add input="{REQUEST_URI}" pattern="^/(gallery2|message-boards)" negate="true" />-->
</conditions>
<action type="Rewrite" url="index.php?q={R:1}" appendQueryString="true" />
</rule>
</rules>
</rewrite>
<!-- <httpErrors>
<remove statusCode="404" subStatusCode="-1" />
<error statusCode="404" prefixLanguageFilePath="" path="/index.php" responseMode="ExecuteURL" />
</httpErrors>
-->
<defaultDocument>
<!-- Set the default document -->
<files>
<remove value="index.php" />
<add value="index.php" />
</files>
</defaultDocument>
<staticContent>
<mimeMap fileExtension=".woff" mimeType="application/x-woff" />
</staticContent>
</system.webServer>
</configuration>

Answer 1

/?q=user means you don't have clean URLs enabled.
Try logging in by navigating to /?q=admin. Then make sure you have .htaccess in your site's root directory (it's hidden so you'll have to enable "see hidden files" in whatever platform you're using).
Once you're sure it's there - if not redownload Drupal with hidden files visible to get the file - clear the cache, go to "Configuration" -> "Search and metadata" -> "Clean URLs" -> enable