Troubleshooting the built-in Visual Studio 2008 WebDev.WebServer.EXE

Question

How do I begin to troubleshoot Visual Studio 2008's WebDev.WebServer.EXE?

I'm trying to run the default ASP.NET MVC project. And I keep getting this message from Firefox:

Unable to connect Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at 127.0.0.1:52589. * The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments. * If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection. * If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

Similar messages from IE and Google Chrome.

I have disabled the Vista firewall. VS2008 is ver SP1.

When I ping localhost on Vista the IP comes back in IPv6 format. Is that normal? The ping works. Security: I have opened up the folder that the app is running in to Everyone - Full.

What else should I be trying? I don't think I have ever run into this issue on a machine before.

Answer 1

There's a couple things that you can try. First, although you may have already tried this, is to ensure it is running. Check your task manager, to see if you can find it there. Also, an icon should appear in your system tray. Secondly, once you've established that it is running, try connecting to it through telnet. For your set up, you could use the following to connect using telnet.

telnet 127.0.0.1 52589

You can also try pointing firefox to localhost, or ::1 which is the IPV6 equivalent of 127.0.0.1.

Answer 2

Are you sure you are trying to access the correct port? If you hover over the system tray icon for Cassini, the tooltip will give you the correct port.

You can also right click on the icon and select Open in Web Browser.

Answer 3

My first feeling is that it could be the port number. If you have the project setup to 'Auto-assign Port' I would change it to a specific port, and vice-versa.