The fix for me was to give Full Control permission on the wwwroot folder for the local user, per this link ("give the local user account (someuser) Full Control over the wwwroot directory").

Yes even though the user was an Administrator, and Admisitrators already had Full Control, still had to add the individual (admin) user/s...

NOTE this was after doing the fix outlined here by "Know Vision Studios", which for me only changed the error msg but then led me to this fix).