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

Vista and Visual Studio - problems with IPv6 and internal WebDev.WebServerI 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 Vesić

7 Comments »

  1. Thank you for this post! After hours of trying to figure out this problem, this was the only help I found.

    Thanks!
    Joe

    Comment by Joe — 7.7.2008 @ 16:31:06

  2. You are welcome :-)

    Comment by Dejan Vesić — 7.7.2008 @ 20:09:20

  3. Great article! you saved my day. a millon thanks! :)

    Comment by yuwings — 31.7.2008 @ 03:01:54

  4. No problem :-)

    Comment by Dejan Vesić — 31.7.2008 @ 10:28:06

  5. Hey,

    Thanks buddy, You saved my day!!!

    New to Asp.NET… I got this problem when i ran my first Hello World App..

    I got links for first iis, then .net, use asp_regiis, Anti virus is running, add localhost to trusted site, run application as admin privilages, but it was so simple that just add # WORKED finally!!!

    Since morning 9am, i have started my search, its almost 3:15am, and have the solution!!

    Cheers,
    Anil

    Comment by Anil — 13.9.2008 @ 22:45:49

  6. Very glad to be of help :-)

    Comment by Dejan Vesić — 14.9.2008 @ 09:06:28

  7. Thanks, it solved my problem.

    Comment by Lucian — 21.9.2008 @ 13:35:41

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment