Setting the default page for ASP.NET (Visual Studio) server configuration

Go to the project's properties page, select the "Web" tab and on top (in the "Start Action" section), enter the page name in the "Specific Page" box. In your case index.aspx

The built-in webserver is hardwired to use Default.aspx as the default page.

The project must have atleast an empty Default.aspx file to overcome the Directory Listing problem for Global.asax.

:)

Once you add that empty file all requests can be handled in one location.

public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication
{
    protected void Application_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        this.Response.Write("hi@ " + this.Request.Path + "?" + this.Request.QueryString);
        this.Response.StatusCode = 200;
        this.Response.ContentType = "text/plain";

        this.Response.End();
    }
}

Right click on the web page you want to use as the default page and choose "Set as Start Page" whenever you run the web application from Visual Studio, it will open the selected page.

Similar to zproxy's answer above I have used the folowing code in the Gloabal.asax.cs to achieve this:

public class Global : System.Web.HttpApplication
{
    protected void Application_BeginRequest(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        if (Request.Url.AbsolutePath.EndsWith("/"))
        {
            Server.Transfer(Request.Url.AbsolutePath + "index.aspx");
        }
    }
}