VS 2005/2008 and Vista - IE cannot display the webpage

Vista and Visual Studio - problems with IPv6 and internal WebDev.WebServer I recently reinstalled my laptop completely (it is very nice Dell XPS M1330) and took that opportunity to make it into decent development machine (w/o all the stupid preinstalled applications).

Installed also Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, SQL 2005 Express and all the little tools necessary (ClipX for example).

Fired up latest web site on which I work on, F5 and … nothing - dreadfull message of “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage”.

Ok, no panic here, let try Visual Studio 2008 with same web site; nothing Same site, on two other development machines (Vista & Vista 64) under VS 2005 and VS 2008 works w/o problem.

Started researching and debugging; it turns out that next generation protocol IPv6, or its implementation on Vista clashes with integrated web server WebDev.WebServer.exe; WebDev has a problem finding localhost address in default configuration.

Easy fix for this is to comment ::1 entry in hosts file:

Uncomment ::1 in hosts file to correct webdev / visual studio problems

No restart is needed, either of computer or Visual Studio.

(to edit hosts file you can use notepad started with elevated rigths or “Run as administrator“; in Open dialog you type in %windir%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts)

25.5.2008

Vista, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studio 2008, Windows

Dejan VesićComments (0)

VS 2005 SP1 Installation Nightmare :-( … and how to wake up

As you probably know, long awaited Visual Studio 2005 SP1 is out.

However, installation of this giant (400+ Mb) update is far from easy, and it is not guaranteed to succeed, at least at first run.

You need to have a LOT free space on your system drive: at least 3 Gb
Make sure that you have enough patience - it can take between 10 minutes and 1,5 hour
If you do not use C++ portion of Visual Studio, deinstall it before installation of SP1 - it can save a lot of installation time.
Deinstall Web Application Project if you have it installed.
Deinstall Visual Studio 2005 Web Deployment Projects if you have it installed.
Deinstall Visual Studio 2005 SP1 beta

Finally, you can speed up installation process by:

Disabling Patch Cache

Create CMD file with following content:
reg export HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer installer.reg reg add HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer /v MaxPatchCacheSize /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f net stop msiserver start /wait VS80sp1-KB926601-X86-ENU.exe reg delete HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Installer /v MaxPatchCacheSize /f reg import installer.reg net stop msiserver del /q installer.reg 2>nul

and save it in folder where SP1 is. Run it - it should cut down installation time significantly.

Ok, you succeeded to do all above, and installation is failing. What next?

Error 1718

Let assume that your operating system is XP SP2. If you got during installation this error:

Error 1718. File was rejected by digital signature policy

try recipe from this location:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925336 - this helped with installation on two locations where it failed previously.

I have Windows Server 2003 SP1 and unfortunately, neither of solutions (disable patch cache or KB925336) helped

I though that memory upgrade will help, so I added 1Gb to total of 2Gb - no luck.

You can also try to:

Disable SAFER check for local administrators

- Note (if exist) previous value of PolicyScope at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\windows\safer\codeidentifiers

- Set this value (or create it as DWORD if does not exist) to 1

- Run net stop msiserver

- Try SP1 install

- Revert PolicyScope to previous value / delete it after installation.

(this helped on two other Windows 2003 SP1 machines; again, not on mine)

Finally, I decided to:

Slipstream SP1 into Visual Studio 2005 and reinstall it

There are couple steps here:

Make Network Installation

Create network administrative installation from your VS 2005 DVD (assuming that E: is DVD and location where you want installation \\dvesic\public\VisualStudio2005SP1):

msiexec.exe /a E:\vs\vs_setup.msi TARGETDIR=\\dvesic\public\VisualStudio2005SP1 /L*vx install.log

I did this all on same machine, using mounted ISO image on a virtual drive and unpacking it at network location on same machine - it took over 2 hours to create network install