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396

answers:

3

On my previous machine I had IIS6 installed and created a web project using IIS as the host. This project was completed, published to an internal hosting server and checked in to source control.

I now need to go back and make a minor change to the project, however in the meantime I have acquired a new machine. On my new machine I don’t have IIS – and don’t really have any wish to go back to using IIS as I find the ASP.Net development server sufficient for my needs.

I can’t open the project at all in Visual Studio without becoming an Administrator and installing IIS 6. Is there some way I can modify the project and solution files to make it play nicely and use the ASP.Net development server instead?

EDIT: additional info, this was created as a web site not a web project so there is no .csproj file.

Version info: Visual Studio 2008, .net 3.5.

Thanks for any help,

+2  A: 

Can you start a new project and use the "Use Custom Web Server" option?

Personally I would start a new project and get the files directly from Source Control - being a web site rather than project you shouldn't run into any problems and whilst you only need to make a minor change now you may well need to make more minor changes in the future so having quick and ready access to the source will likely be useful.

Justin Wignall
Thanks for this. In the end I recreated it as a web application rather than another web site as I may need that flexibility in future - and manually copied the files across from source control. Worked a treat.
Sam Meldrum
A: 

Looking around, it seems you can run the Development server stand alone:

http://blog.sb2.fr/post/2008/11/28/Use-Microsoft-NET-ASPNET-Development-Server-Standalone.aspx

Gavin
+1  A: 

If it's a Web Site project (no .proj file, no pre-compilation of the project code into a dll) you can try the following:

Open the .sln file in a text editor of choice, and in the "ProjectSection(WebsiteProperties)" add the following line:

VWDPort = "xxxx"

Where xxxx is a random port number that's not in use - this seems to be the only differnce between using a proper server and using the development server.

If it was a Web Application Project you could try the following:

Open the .proj file in a text editor of choice, and modify the WebProjectProperties:

False True 0 / False

That might get you going.

Zhaph - Ben Duguid
Changing this didn't seem to work. I think there are more differences in the .sln files ProjectSection than just that. In the end I went for a new project. Thanks for the help though.
Sam Meldrum
No probs - I did a compare (with a 2008 solution), and this was the only difference in the .sln file. There were some other differences in the file locations between 2005 and 2008, and the version numbers which I guess could also account for it, but the main thing was the VWDPort addition.
Zhaph - Ben Duguid