Visual Studio 2012 IIS Express 8 Fresh Install - Can't Connect

Question

On Visual Studio 2010 + IIS Express 7 I was able to use IIS Express as a server and browse sites.

I\'ve since installed Visual Studio 2012 (on Windows 7 64-bit) with

Answer 1

I tracked down the problem on my machine.

When I checked my C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file, I did not have

 127.0.0.1   localhost

in the file. I remember changing it "temporarily" to troubleshoot a problem. Adding back in the missing record fixed my problem.

You can test what IP your machine thinks localhost is by simply ping localhost and making sure that 127.0.0.1 is pinged and not some other IP.