How to configure Visual Studio 2008 to use IIS Express?

Question

The IIS Express FAQ notes that:

You can also manually launch IIS Express from the command line and use it with Visual Studio 2008, using the custom web server option

How do I configure the Start Options to get this working?

Answer 1

The following seems to work for IIS Express launching from the command line:

1. Open the Properties for the web site

2. Select Start Options

3. Under Start Action select Start External Program, put the path to iisexpress.exe (C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Express\iisexpress.exe)

4. Command Line Arguments: /path:{path to the project solution} /clr:3.5

5. Under Server, select Use Custom Server

6. Base Url: http://localhost:8080/ (the default for IIS Express)

7. Important! Uncheck everything under Debuggers otherwise you'll get an error "Unable to start debugging on the web server.

Information on launching using a config file can be found at this site: Debug Your .NET Web Project With IIS Express [Tips & Tricks]. This is VS2010 specific but I suspect the same will work for 2008.