MVC Bundle fails to load

Question

We're having a strange problem that we can't seem to find a cause for. What seems to happen is the javascript and css bundles no longer load on the page. When we initially navigate to the page everything seems to be working fine. After two page refreshes the page loads without any css and the javascript files are loaded incorrectly. Navigating to the javascript file in the browswer shows it loaded like this:

‹������ì}{·Ñàÿú°£÷È)JNÚk„ö#[ÊEï9–Î’›·§ªéŠ\I›P\–»´¬Ôêg¿™Á¯,vIÊŽÓ÷ëéÓ˜`�ƒù…Áöç6ÔçêYQTe5OgêÍ—ý/ûPÝ«ªš ¶·/³êÜ–õGÅu‚µŸ³Ûy~yU©/v?Þ‚ÿû£:¹É«*›÷ÔÁtÔÇJ/òQ6-³±ZLÇÙ\ýpp¢–5¯®ço»º9/·]Ûç“â|û:-Ôö‹ƒçû/÷±ËíüBu«ÛYV\¨ŸÿÏ"›ßªáp¨:ý"ŸfãN¢þ¹¡Tu5/nÔ4»Qûóy1ïvÜÔþÚ)Õ¦oÒãÑ<ŸUjžýc‘ϳÒ@ë$w.ÓQ•SÕÝÔð:‹2SÐ>Uoà÷›t®ÞdóëÕfÿbÚÿù Î&yÕí¨Nrºsfõ®R8ö®i…ê[õ…úÿÃÂ9}Œ¾NÔ»wŠ×‚é=ªÁ§¯ù§/°åãDõþ“w3zÜÿºÿXsuË›Íiðww]]-ùfccûsÄûù„7PðÿÓ2Gä÷. b•JÜþ¦SÒt¶?ómKlò!Gøñ‰ýƒ ŸöÍRš†ÛÛêùñ±:yµûòøàäàð¥:~}ttø fq|U,*øßÀ®ÃÍÍMÿº€YNó_ç4«DCx/D7L¿˜ûÓq×Ò6n¼l{n\Œ×Ù´êæYZeû“u;¯@µ®Á0ûo ÎËôH~h�õcvþK^¸îÔ@un‚oжÓ3õ(~e•áêûÁf¬æ¡¬G5Tñ–UаÞU¼ÓS¼€­ÚÅyNajŸF書é"Ê&ý²ºd§ØàL=�"qÔ×TÀ ªÅ|ªþ© ÇAªigÜñA™¶éÈ#{¼p”W4Ú<ûJu•êÿÔ×¼EÓŽ¡-Ø—ýt’½½NG£ô†¨kT–[b{k¦›]/&°ú§CODÝñbžâ¿8ýŒÒÉ$£j86÷y“誺ÊKú´ÙÅ&}@7PUÐë@{Õ|‘©»DôužŽ~ƒÂ¸t³ú‚Γ>ìÅËËlÞÝì—‹Ù¬˜W}Æ a ƒá2«Nòëöc×Âï)7SŽ}3BðfWŒ@O2ÒÍBì=½ 4âXƒÄô¶a@fHpôe£<ôÔ±wžOÇ'p–TÓ„ívg“ì×y¥ÚWét

The entire page is like that. My best guess is that somehow the files are being compressing twice and the browser is only decompressing once. I don't understand why on initial page load everything is working correctly.

Notes

1. We've tried setting debug = true and debug = false in the config, which has not seemed to work.
2. Our dev and local environments seem to work fine but prod and staging environments do not work.
3. The web config files are identical between environments except for connection strings.

It would be great if someone could help us out. Even better if it's just something easy and stupid to fix. Thanks in advance

Answer 1

So I got something working, it appeared that somehow one of the javascript bundles had duplicated (kind of a weird process as we have internal nuget packages containing bundles along with the web application also containing budles...). I'm not sure why this was causing the strangeness in the files being delivered, but once I removed the duplicated bundle it appears there is no longer an issue.