I want to put a simple HTML page for anyone accessing my IP address via browser. I haven't installed any third-party web server (like XAMPP) and IIS is not installed either, but pointing my web browser to http://localhost/ gives no error, but a blank page.
Still, I cannot find where the webroot folder is. Putting index.html in Users\Public\Public Documents does not work.
When the browser opens localhost page, right click on it and choose "View Page Source". Find several file names, like favicon.ico, other images and folders that are referenced there. Then search for these files and folders on your computer.
For ASP.Net, the root folder was the folder of the ASP.Net sample application that I've wrote, not on the system drive. So, Check all computer drives.
If localhost gives a blank page and no error, that doesn't mean that a webserver is running. It probably only means that the hosts file links localhost to 127.0.0.1 and nothing more. If a webserver was running, it would generate a result (webserver is working or something) or an error.
And yes you can put a blank html index file in the root folder, and that would result in a blank page as well. But no webserver does that by default, so you should have done that yourself.
So the default root folder, that depends on the server you're running, and as you're probably not running any webserver, there is no web root folder.
http://localhost. And you will not get a blank page if nothing is listening. IE will say that cannot display the webpage, Chrome says webpage is not available.
http://localhost. Search for a lines that begin with HTTP/1.1 200 OK or something similar - those lines will indicate response from webserver of anykind. If response from port 80 will have something different in the first lines - this will mean something other than webserver is configured on this port and it is most likely misconfiguration as port 80 for the sake of clarity should be reserved for http protocol communication.