Prevent iisexpress from running the websites in a solution when the startup app is a console app

Question

I have a solution with a number of projects in it. Even if I set the web project's start options to:

1. Don't open a page. Wait for a request from an external application.
2. Use custom webserver. Base URL: http://localhost.

And the startup project to:

1. Single startup project
2. Select the console application (not website)

When I press start debugging, IIS express launches (shows up on the taskbar). How do I prevent from IIS Express from launching? I am only running a console application, and don't want IIS Express running.

In fact, all of the websites in the solution launch in IIS, and they consume resources on my machine unnecessarily.

Answer 1

There's easy way to do this: in web project's properties F4 (NOT right click-> properties) set "always start when debugging" to false

Answer 2

In the Property Pages-> Start Options: Set Start Action = "Don't open a page..."; Set Server -> Use custom server and leave Base URL blank.

Answer 3

For Visual Studio 2013, I configured it like this:

Start Action: Don't open a page.

Servers: External Host

Project Url: http://NotAStartupApp/

Answer 4

I uninstalled IIS Express in windows and it worked for me. After publishing my files from VS, automatically my settings changed to point to IIS Express and it wont change to IIS, no matter what, for my Website project. Hope this works for someone.

Answer 5

To extend @Aleksey L.'s answer, you can actually do this with a plain text editor like Notepad.

In your projectname.csproj.user file, make sure your the AlwaysStartWebServerOnDebug node has a value set to False.

projectname.csproj.user

<Project >  
  <ProjectExtensions>
    <VisualStudio>
      <FlavorProperties>
        <WebProjectProperties>
            ..          
          <AlwaysStartWebServerOnDebug>False</AlwaysStartWebServerOnDebug>
            ..          
        </WebProjectProperties>
      </FlavorProperties>
    </VisualStudio>
  </ProjectExtensions>
</Project>

Alternatively, to do this without a text editor you can use Powershell

$file = 'projectname.csproj.user'
$x = [xml] (Get-Content $file)
$x.Project.ProjectExtensions.VisualStudio.FlavorProperties.WebProjectProperties.AlwaysStartWebServerOnDebug = 'False'
$x.Save($file)