VS2010 error: Unable to start debugging on the web server

Question

I get error message \"Unable to start debugging on the web server\" in Visual Studio 2010. I clicked the Help button and followed the related suggestions without success.

Answer 1

I had this problem in Visual Studio 2012 when running a website I had created in Visual Studio 2010. I tried each of the following, which did not solve the problem, but still may have been required:

1. Checked that the App Pool was targeted to the same framework as what was specified in the web.config

2. Started the 64bit Remote Debugger: \Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\Common7\IDE\Remote Debugger\x64\msvsmon.exe

3. Set the DisableLoopbackCheck registry key and restarted Windows. MS Instructions here

4. Browsed the site locally (it came up just fine).

5. Finally I found the IIS setting that fixed the issue.

   1. Go to IIS (7.5 in my case) and click on the relevant site in the Sites node.
   2. Double click .NET Compilation in the ASP.NET section
   3. Under Behavior, set Debug to True.
   4. Click Apply and run the site in Visual Studio.