Unable to launch the IIS Express Web server

Question

I have an asp net MVC 4 solution  When I try to open it using Visual studio 2012  I get following error      Microsoft Visual Studio      Configuring Web https   localhost  for ASP NET 4 5 failed  You must   manually configure this site for ASP NET 4 5 in order for the site to   run correctly  Could not find the server https   localhost 44300  on   the local machine  Make sure the local IIS server has been configured   to support secure communications       OK   Help   Although the solution opens  Also  When I try to run it from debug menu  I get following error    Unable to launch the IIS Express Web server   The start URL specified is not valid  https   localhost 44300    and I can not debug the code  how to get rid of these errors and debug run the web site from VS 2012    Please suggest

User · Answer

Delete contents inside IISExpress folder and Close and Open the visual studio  and Run again  It should be fine   Or Change the port number

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in my case I added new site binding on applicationHost config file after delete that binding it work correct  the applicationHost config path is in youre project root directory on  VS hidden  folder

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I had similar issue - VS couldn t load particular web project because of that error  Here is what helped    Edit project in solution Look for UseIISExpress and or UseIIS sections and make sure that they don t intersect with each other    In my case it was like this        lt UseIISExpress gt True lt  UseIISExpress gt       lt UseIIS gt True lt  UseIIS gt        So  I ve changed this to        lt UseIISExpress gt True lt  UseIISExpress gt       lt UseIIS gt False lt  UseIIS gt        and then it worked

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In my situation  the IIS Express applicationhost config file had a typo in the managedRuntimeVersion attribute of several elements  This was happening for both Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2013  I only received the first part of the message  stating      Unable to launch the IIS Express Web server    It logged an error in the event log with the message      The worker process failed to pre-load  Net Runtime version v4 030319    The correct runtime version is v4 0 30319  note the second period    The steps I took to correct    Navigate to C  Users  Documents IISExpress config Edit applicationhost config Find the  config section Correct any references to  v4 030319  to read  v4 0 30319    Visual Studio successfully started IIS Express the next time I debugged a web application

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After disabling the firewall I was able to run it without any issues

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roblll had it right  But for those of you who didn t want to dig for the answer  here it is     Close Visual Studio  might not be necessary  but it won t hurt   Navigate to your Documents folder  This is where my IISExpress configuration directory was  In the config folder  there is a file called the application host  Open that  Search for the name of your project  It should have been added in there by Visual Studio when it bombed in your previous attempts  Note that there s a binding for HTTP with the port you intend to use for https      Change this   lt binding protocol  http  bindingInformation    44300 localhost    gt     to this   lt binding protocol  https  bindingInformation    44300 localhost    gt     Keep in mind  Visual Studio might have supplied different ports than you expected  Just make sure that the ports in the binding correspond to what s in the Web tab of your project s properties   http   www hanselman com blog WorkingWithSSLAtDevelopmentTimeIsEasierWithIISExpress aspx

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Before you try anything else  make sure you 1  restart visual studio  mostly for refreshing memory resident options from files  and 2  restart your system  mostly for invalid file locking   If your problem is such temporary or self-fixed those will do without changing anything  It worked for me with PC restart  Also if you work on a multi-user project make sure you have the latest workable version - someone else may had check in something invalid by mistake at e g  the project file and you mess with your system for no reason  If those won t work  then you probably need to alter some setting s  that are stuck  missing or need modification - there are plenty propositions on other answers

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I too had this issue  after turning off the firewall  after opening as administrator  after double checking all the settings were correct   My problem was unique in that I wanted to test SSL locally  but also have the service available over the LAN  So I d changed the app URL to use the local IP aka  192 168 1 10 in my case   Switching back to localhost fixed the problem  as did turning off SSL  so I discovered that the local SSL cert only worked for localhost

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If using VS2015 or above  Make sure iisexpress process is not running   Make sure no other process is using your desired port  You can do that by executing  netstat -a -b   in the console  as Administrator  type cmd in start menu  right click and choose  Run as admiminstrator    If you see an entry which state is ESTABLISHED or LISTENING for example it means that some other process is using this port  You ll need to terminate that process or change the port   Then delete the following file   lt  lt path to solution folder gt  gt   vs config applicationhost config   note the  vs folder may be hidden  then find  lt  lt project-name gt  gt  csproj user file  open it with text editor  notepad  and make sure IISUrl under WebProjectProperties is configured to  lt IISUrl gt http   localhost XXXXX  lt  IISUrl gt  where XXXXX is your desired port   after doing this and trying to start the app you may get  HTTP Error 500 19 - Internal Server Error The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid    Then go to  Project Properties  -  Web and Press the  Create Virtual Directory  button

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None of the other solutions worked for me   I disabled edit-and-continue  and all is well

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I had the same issue  the cause was that the flag  override application root URL  was set under Properties --  Web After I removed the flag  IIS Express was starting fine with the defined port

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VS2015  edit file  csproj user  Insert the following xml tags  do not duplicate if already exists    lt UseIIS gt True lt  UseIIS gt   lt AutoAssignPort gt True lt  AutoAssignPort gt   lt DevelopmentServerPort gt 2870 lt  DevelopmentServerPort gt   lt DevelopmentServerVPath gt   lt  DevelopmentServerVPath gt   lt IISUrl gt http   localhost 2859 lt  IISUrl gt   lt OverrideIISAppRootUrl gt True lt  OverrideIISAppRootUrl gt   lt IISAppRootUrl gt http   localhost 2859 lt  IISAppRootUrl gt   lt NTLMAuthentication gt False lt  NTLMAuthentication gt   lt UseCustomServer gt False lt  UseCustomServer gt   lt CustomServerUrl gt http   localhost app lt  CustomServerUrl gt    Insert above tags in XML node bellow    lt ProjectExtensions gt  lt VisualStudio gt  lt FlavorProperties GUID   349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21   gt  lt WebProjectProperties gt

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I ran in to this error today  Running Win 8 1 and VS 2013  Suddenly my projects could not run anymore and i got the message  Unable to launch the IIS Express Web server  and no further information    After a while I found out that all the projects that the IIS Express could not start all were running  net 3 5  Projects running later versions did start ok   The solution for me was to remove  net 3 5  from control panel -  turn windows features on off   restart windows and the add  net 3 5 again

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None of the methods presented here worked for me  What finally worked was to set the DevelopmentServerPort to 0 in the  csproj file        lt WebProjectProperties gt         lt UseIIS gt True lt  UseIIS gt         lt AutoAssignPort gt True lt  AutoAssignPort gt         lt DevelopmentServerPort gt 0 lt  DevelopmentServerPort gt         lt DevelopmentServerVPath gt   lt  DevelopmentServerVPath gt         lt IISUrl gt http   localhost 52973  lt  IISUrl gt         lt NTLMAuthentication gt False lt  NTLMAuthentication gt         lt UseCustomServer gt False lt  UseCustomServer gt         lt CustomServerUrl gt         lt  CustomServerUrl gt         lt SaveServerSettingsInUserFile gt False lt  SaveServerSettingsInUserFile gt       lt  WebProjectProperties gt

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Please go through the snapshot  I faced the same error but the following setting resolved it   Select Current page as Start Action Select specific port in Servers option and enter port 26641   in virtual path enter   NTLM option should be unchecked

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There is no need to delete the entire IISExpress folder in the directory C  Users you  Documents IISExpress   Just comment    lt binding protocol  https  bindingInformation    8090 localhost    gt    in the applicationhost config file in the IISExpress folder

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I read all the answers herein and then  as mentioned in Mihail Shishkov answer  jumped to Project Properties   Web   Servers   Create Virtual Directory   This had the effect of getting me by the exception      Unable to launch the IIS Express Web server    The start URL specified is not valid  http   localhost 44300

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Had been messing around with IISExpress and Project to try and get it listening on a different URL than localhost  when reverting back I had this error and after following all the answers here  none of them worked   Eventually noticed that in the projects Porperties -  Web I had  Start URL  checked under Start Action  but the input box was empty  Changing this to  Current Page  fixed my issue

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For a 2021 Solution in dotnet core  you can fix this error by right-clicking the project in Solution Explorer  and choosing  Edit Project File   On the Debug Tab  at the bottom  you can directly configure the desired port and whether to use SSL or not   Changes here need to be saved with Control S   Once that s done  you can launch the project and confirm it fixed your issue  no having to delete IISFolders or anything else suggested here

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Start with deleting the file IISEXPRESS that exists in your directory  then start debugging   If that does not solve the problem  go to your Project  Ctrl Alt L    Right click -  Properties -  Debug  and  Check  Enable Windows Authentication

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I had the exact same problem  The reason - bad IIS config file   Try deleting the automatically-created IISExpress folder  which is usually located at  userprofile  Documents  e g  C  Users  you  Documents IISExpress   Don t worry  VS should create it again - correctly  this time - once you run your solution again     EDIT  Command line for deleting the folder   rmdir  s  q   userprofile  Documents IISExpress

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Jason s Shavers series of articles here http   jasonrshaver com  tag  Client Certificates explain exactly how to set up your applicationhost config site entry to allow the app to run in either ssl or standard http     One of the things he recommends is putting two binding entries for the site   This is what I did                lt bindings gt                   lt binding protocol  http  bindingInformation    59945 localhost    gt                   lt binding protocol  https  bindingInformation    44300 localhost   gt               lt  bindings gt    He also recommends changing other settings as well   It worked on two of my three machines   Each time I am told to manually configure a site in the application host it usually has to do with the bindings    example using same port for multiple web apps

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Same Problem  but needed to start VS2013 in Admin Mode

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Along with the answer given by  Yehuda Shapira I had to make another change which is Delete the  csproj user file where the binding information like    lt IISUrl gt http   localhost 54462  lt  IISUrl gt    is stored Delete that File Close visual Studio and then rebuild Hope this helps

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Restarting the computer was the only thing that worked for me  Classic 101 IT

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I ran into this exact problem recently and it was because the project was stored on a network drive   Since IIS locally runs as NetworkService it didn t have access to the network share where the project was stored   Assuming that opening a project from a network share is against best-practices  I copied the project to the local C   drive and then the project ran as expected

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I had the same problem after installing Visual Studio 2013 Update 3  VS 2013 can not load Microsoft VisualStudio TraceLogPackage dll Unable to launch the IIS Express Web server My problem solved by doing the following steps   1  Repair Visual Studio 2013 Update 3 2  Start the Developer Command Prompt as administrator  3  Type devenv exe  setup then press enter

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I had the same problem  in my case I just cleaned and then rebuild my solution and it worked for me

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In my case the project was on network drive and deleting IIS Express folder didn t help as described in other answers  My workaround was copying the project to local drive and it worked

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I had the same issue  I resolve it by changing port number from project properties  I changed my port number 50624 to 50625

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I was also facing this problem after I run XAMPP s Apache Server on my PC  For running it  I kill all the process on 8086 port by writing net stop http on the administrator command prompt  I think killing the processes caused this problem for me  For me  this problem is solved after doing the following steps   Closing Visual Studio and SQL Management Studio  Going to Services and starting all SQL services except SQL Server Agent  SQLEXPRESS   Going to C  Users  lt your pc name gt  Documents and deleting IISExpress folder  Restarting PC   new thing todo which I don t found above  Starting the Visual Studio and running the program

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My issue required a 3-fold solution    Remove the IISExpress folder in your Documents folder  Set the web project as your startup project by either right-clicking it and select  Set as startup project   or doing so through your solution properties  Set the startup URL  or set to  Current Page  or  Specific Page   Mine was set to  Don t open a page  Wait for a request from an external application  and I had to change it to  Specific Page   which I leave blank so it will go to my app s home page  before it would work

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I had a similar problem when running my solution from VS2012   Unable to launch the IIS Express Web server    The start URL specified is not valid  https   localhost 44301    I had the incorrect project selected as Startup Project   I made the Cloud project the Startup  right click on project -  Set as Startup Project  and everything started working fine

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The only solution that worked for me was to create another test project  Then following the next steps    Right click the project and go to Properties -  Web Under the project URL in the Use Local IIS Web Server section  copy the project URL http    localhost 59002   - this is from the test project  Navigate to the project which is giving this error  Right click the project and go to    Properties -  Web  Paste the project URL in the Use Local IIS Web Server section  URL copied from the test project   Close the test project and save  Delete the test project and run the project that gave the error  Works after that      Maybe not the best way but it was the only way I could get this to work  I received this error message after I reloaded my laptop  hard drive crashed  and got all of my projects from the server of where they where hosted

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Try following steps      delete the IISExpress folder as  Yehuda Shapira said   restart computer   delete the  vs folder in project     Have a good luck

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Close all instances of Visual Studio  Open Task Manager  End all active IIS processes  Restart Visual Studio

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I had the same problem Please Follow below steps    1- Open applicationhost file in Documents IISExpress config and add below code if it s not exist               lt site name  solutionname  id  2  gt                   lt application path     applicationPool  solutionname  gt                       lt virtualDirectory path     physicalPath  physicaladdressofproject    gt                   lt  application gt                   lt bindings gt                       lt binding protocol  http  bindingInformation    xxxx localhost    gt                   lt  bindings gt               lt  site gt    2- Then go to the root file of your project and delete all of updates are done on the project by using different version of Visual Stdio  3- Next go to  root  vs config and delete applicationhost it will be created automatically  4-Run the project  It worked for me

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The solution for me was switching from IIS Express to Local IIS    Make sure though your virtual directory is bound to the same port

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After Two Hour searching on web i found my solution as  bellow steps - close visual studio - remove  vs folder of your project  - open visual studio and rerun project  thats work for me  have a good time

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We had the same issue with our sites  We were able to fix this all inside of Visual Studio  We are using 2012 Ultimate   The underlying issue we saw was that with SSL enabled  for some reason  VS was assigning the same port for the standard and secure URLs  This issue seemed to arise when we were pulling the code down from TFS   To remedy it  we undertook the following steps    Right click the project and go to Properties -  Web Under the project URL in the Use Local IIS Web Server section  remove the  s  from the URL and Save   EG  go from https    44301 to http    44301  This will allow the next step to work  In Solution Explorer  select the Project and in the Properties window  press F4 if not displayed  change SSL Enabled to False then back to True  It will generate a new port that is different from the standard URL  In my case  I have 44301 as my SSL and 44305 as my standard  Navigate back to Properties -  Web and add the  s  back to the project URL  F5 and ride    Make sure that the check box for Override application root URL is unchecked

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I had the same problem  thanks to  Jacob for giving information about it   The Reason is - wrong entry for your project in config file applicationhost located at   C  Users  yourusername  Documents IISExpress config     Close all Visual Studio solutions  Rename IISExpress folder to some IISExpress-Copy  instead of deleting you can have a copy of it  Now open VS again and build debug the project  now you would see IISExpress folder created for you again with correct configuration    It worked for me and hope it should work for you also

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Sharing this for future readers  Manually creating a virtual directory worked for me    Select project in solution explorer Press Alt   Enter Go to Web section Click Create Virtual Directory

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In my case  I went to Debug   Project Properties   Web  in visual studio  and then I changed IIS Express to Local IIS in servers section

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Well none of the above mentioned steps worked for me  In my case my applicationhost config file was somehow missing the following two line of code    lt add name  rules-64-ISAPI-2 0  path    rules  verb     modules  IsapiModule  scriptProcessor   windir  Microsoft NET Framework64 v2 0 50727 aspnet isapi dll  preCondition  classicMode runtimeVersionv2 0 bitness64    gt       lt add name  xoml-64-ISAPI-2 0  path    xoml  verb     modules  IsapiModule  scriptProcessor   windir  Microsoft NET Framework64 v2 0 50727 aspnet isapi dll  preCondition  classicMode runtimeVersionv2 0 bitness64    gt    Hope this can help some one

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check the antivirus firewall and allow access visual studio to network  for example in nod32   goto setting  f5  - gt  network- gt personal firewall- gt rules and zones   in the  zone and rule editor  click  setup  and find the vs 2010 or 12 or     and allow access to network

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My problem was eventually solved when I looked at the IIS Express registry key   HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft IISExpress   I had an entry CustomUserHome pointing to My Web Sites which was causing havoc

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i will suggest one way to fix this issue   1 Delete the  Documents IISExpress folder using the following console command   rmdir  s  q   userprofile  Documents IISExpress    Delete the applicationhost config file which is placed within the  vs Config  folder in your Visual Studio project root folder  Change the project   s website random URL  within Visual Studio  right-click to the project node in Solution Explorer  then select Properties  navigate through the Web panel  then change the number in the Project Url textbox value  Add the  CSRUN DISABLE WORKAROUNDS Environment System variable with the value of 1 as shown in the following screenshot  thanks to Juan M  Elosegui for reporting this on this SO thread and for the image       Good Luck

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I had the same issue and then I opened the task manager -  processes then killed the iisexpress exe process  After that I tried to run the application and was able to run it successfully

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I had the same issue  I had deleted a lot of folders under C  users  path to free some space on my machine  After which I started getting this error   I just had to restart my machine and it all worked fine

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I had the same problem with VS 2013 and even after all possible tries it was not working My problem was solved by   - In control panel  Program and Features  I found that all of the IIS related features were unchecked I finally checked all of those and restarted my system  - Then I started my VS 2013 as administrator and thats it everything    worked fine then    At least you can give this a try since it worked for me

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I had the same problem but the solution that worked for me was different    In VS2013 Opened Debug    YourWebsiteName  Properties Select the  Web  tab  Under  Servers  I found  Override application root URL  was checked  I unchecked it and saved    That was all I needed to get things running

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It seems you need to do some configuring as you seem to be using SSL  here s a step-by-step guide by Scott Hanselman himself

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I d set up Internet Connection Sharing on my machine for virtual machines   I switched it off and I was able to debug in Visual Studio 2015   However to consistently debug following a reboot  I needed to set the Internet Connection Sharing service to manual start up  even though none of my internet connections had Internet Connection Sharing enabled

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In my case after I allowed external request to my IIS Express website and configured windows firewall to allow iisexpress exe  I can t start it from within Visual Studio 2013  I can still start it with command line  and it serves local and external requests well   C  Program Files  x86  IIS Express gt iisexpress  site MyWebSiteName   I tried to create a firewall rule to allow my port  after that VS worked

[visual-studio] Unable to launch the IIS Express Web server

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