Losing Graphics in FormsAuthorization

Question

I have a System I have upgraded (from ASP 1.0 to 2.0) and added master pages for a uniform appearance. It looked fine until I re-added Forms Authentication (had taken it out during development to avoid logging on).

Now, all images, image buttons and title bars stored in folders within this project are not showing. Not only are they not appearing when I view them through Debug, but in the design screen, when I look there, they are gone (replaced by alternate text where applicable). I used Visual Studio to find the locations and it still doesn't find it.

I have tried all variations of full paths, ~/... and ../... that I can think of.

After extensive searching on the web, I added the access to the web.config - I specifically added authentication in the web config for the graphics folder. I tried it on roles (guest and not guest) and on users * and ?:
<location path="images">
    <system.web>
      <authorization>
        <allow users="*"/>
      </authorization>
    </system.web>
  </location>

Folder security, allows access all users (full permission).

I have tried deleting the controls from the page AND the folder and putting them back again. I have deleted the graphics folder entirely and added it anew. I have deleted and re-created the Master Page (though in retrospect, some of the images were not on the Master Page, so that was not the issue -- I was just desperate).

The graphics are not visible in design mode, but I get no errors on them. I can even reselect them using the "select URL" process and they won't show up.

All of this started happening after I added Forms Authentication, so I would think it was a security issue as described on an old Expert's Exchange solution, but adding the folder to the web.config as described didn't work.

I am stumped and would love any suggestions!