<p>It's just so much <code>HRESULT E_FAIL</code>, if you know what I'm talking about.  </p>

<p>And if you use Visual Studio, you know what I'm talking about.</p>

<p>Similar thread, but not a duplicate: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/196001/is-the-design-view-for-aspx-pages-in-visual-studio-useful">Is the design view for aspx pages in Visual Studio useful?</a></p>

<p>Any insight, including input from Microsoft MVPs (oh, I know you're out there) would be super cool.</p>

Try this:
Put your MasterPages in a seperate folder (if they aren't already.  Call it
```
masterpages
```
.  Then add this to your
```
web.config
```
:
```
```
<location path="MasterPage">
<system.web>
  <authorization>
    <allow users="?" />
  </authorization>
</system.web>
```
```
This will allow anonymous access to that folder and allow access to the masterpage.  Also, are these nested masterpages?