IISExpress 8 Cannot read configuration file redirection.config

Question

I\'m running Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64) with IISExpress8 and when navigating to

c:\\Program Files (x86)\\IIS Express>iisexpress.exe

i

Answer 1

I have the exact same issue with Visual Studio 2013 on Windows 8.1 I map My Documents folder to SkyDrive, so the IISExpress folder was marked as "Online-only". Once I marked it as "Available offline" everything worked.

Answer 2

On IIS 10 Express. Make sure that Visual Studio (VS) is turned off.

I first found out that %userprofile%\Documents\IISExpress\config\ was not working.

I first thought IIS Express had clashed with IIS from the windows OS.

I uninstalled it, yet no changes, then I uninstalled IIS 10 Express that was installed with VS 2019 through the control panel.

Then I went ahead to discover that this file is saved at the C:\Users\username\OneDrive\Documents\IISExpress, associated with one drive storage, so I advise you copy %userprofile%\Documents\IISExpress\config\ and paste in your windows explorer navigation to find directory.

go to one directory higher, and/or rename the config folder. Restart your VS and run the project again.

Answer 3

Using VS2013 / Windows 7

Close solution. Open Windows Explorer and right-click on "My Documents\IISExpress\config" directory and select "Decrypt". Be sure "Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files" is selected. Reopen VS solution.

Answer 4

Using Visual Studio 2013

I had to stop visual studio rename the whole config directory, Documents > IISExpress> Config then start a new web project, which fails but it recreates the config directory, then I rebooted and launched visual studio and everything worked!

I noticed this problem after copying a project between 2 computers, perhaps it was caused by a duplicate IISExpress port or something trivial.

Answer 5

It's 2020, I am reporting the same problem in Visual Studio 2019.

Cause: Multiple VS instances open with different web app (Blazor in my instance).

Solution: Close all VS instances and re-open the solution that you want to run.

Answer 6

In some situations simply renaming/deleting the applicationhost.config file isn't enough since VS won't always recreate it for you. I believe the following will fix it under all circumstances:

Close Visual Studio.

Make sure there are no IIS Express processes running, then delete C:\Users\XXXX\Documents\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.config (where XXXX is your Windows username).

On command line, execute c:\Program Files\IIS Express\iisexpress.exe. This will recreate the necessary configs. Press 'Q' straight away to end the process.

Open Visual Studio again and Start/Debug your web project. Everything should now be working.