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ASP.NET Development Server Problems Under Vista

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I guess I was bored last night so I decided to upgrade my development system to Vista.  I have been running Windows XP Pro without any real issues but I wanted to start using some of the features of Vista I had only used in my virtual machines.

The upgrade went pretty well with only a handful of driver issues for video, printer and my sound card.

I installed the Visual Studio 2005 updates to run on Vista outlined by Microsoft and Visual Studio seemed to run just fine.    Note that ASP.NET is not installed by default, so you will need to enable it.

I normally use the ASP.NET Development Server for ASP.NET applications for development and testing and move over to IIS for deployment.   The only real problem I faced was hitting Ctrl-F5 in Visual Studio 2005 to run one of my web applications, the server started, Internet Explorer opened but nothing happened.  I waited for several minutes, but nothing.

After searching the web many different ways I found out that Vista implements IPv6 (versus the old IPv4) and browsers may have issues resolving http://localhost.  Since I use both Internet Explorer and Firefox for web development I decided to try just copying the URL the ASP.NET Development Server was using and pasting manually into both browsers and the same result…nothing, no error, nothing.

It turns out others have had this same problem and you can turn off IPv6 in Firefox pretty easily.

Disable IPv6 in Firefox
  1. Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter.
  2. Scroll down until you find network.dns.disableIPv6.
  3. Double-click on it to change its value to true.
  4. Restart Firefox.

After restarting Firefox I pasted the address used by ASP.NET Development Server into the Firefox address bar….and it worked like a charm.  So, it seems IPv6 is the issue.

I spent an hour or so trying to find a similar configuration for Internet Explorer but had no luck.  If a reader finds a setting in IE to disable IPv6 I would like to hear about it so I can update this post.

The solution I did get to work in IE was to disable IPv6 for my system.  I found a great article by the Cable Guy which pointed out what to do.   In short I set the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\tcpip6\Parameters\DisabledComponents

to a value of 0xff and restarted the system.  Checking the ASP.NET Development Server URL in the IE address bar displayed my page.

Conclusion

This worked for me but I have reservations about the solution.  What are the side-effects or the future effects of disabling IPv6 which Microsoft includes with Vista.  If the system evolves and I need IPv6 then I will have a different problem.

If someone has a different solution I would like to hear it.  I am not keen on disabling IPv6 but it works and it is not irreversible.  On the plus side, browsing the web seems to be faster.

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Comments

  1. Charles Assaf says

    Found a more elegant solution for you (don’t kick yourself too hard).

    Disable IPv6 in your network adapter’s properties (you likely wont need it for a couple of years yet, and M$FT should have figured it out by then).

    This works for both IE and Firefox (without changing Firefox’s config).

  2. Charles Assaf says

    Found a more elegant solution for you (don’t kick yourself too hard).
    Disable IPv6 in your network adapter’s properties (you likely wont need it for a couple of years yet, and M$FT should have figured it out by then).
    This works for both IE and Firefox (without changing Firefox’s config).

  3. Rob Bazinet says

    @Charles I tried this and it did not work, I had to do what I documented in my post. I found out disabling IPv6 on the network adapter did not disable for loopback.

    Thanks.

  4. Rob Bazinet says

    @Charles I tried this and it did not work, I had to do what I documented in my post. I found out disabling IPv6 on the network adapter did not disable for loopback.
    Thanks.

  5. Saeed Tabrizi says

    Hi

    I have same problem too in vs2008 on vista .

    I configured my firefox as you say , its working good

    But my system , still not working by localhost .

    if you find any solution , please tell to me by my email.

  6. Saeed Tabrizi says

    Hi
    I have same problem too in vs2008 on vista .
    I configured my firefox as you say , its working good
    But my system , still not working by localhost .
    if you find any solution , please tell to me by my email.

  9. portella says

    wow … Thanks a lot Rob! This was happing to me also … I tried to disable IPv6 in network adapter?s properties as Charles suggested without success …

    Thanks!

  10. portella says

    wow … Thanks a lot Rob! This was happing to me also … I tried to disable IPv6 in network adapter?s properties as Charles suggested without success …
    Thanks!

  13. marko says

    what about windows xp pro, i have wrong ports in IE and in ASP.NET development server when i load local webpage..

    Visual studio 2008 pro..

  14. marko says

    what about windows xp pro, i have wrong ports in IE and in ASP.NET development server when i load local webpage..
    Visual studio 2008 pro..

  17. Manni says

    Wow. Interesting.

    I’d be curious to see what Vista’s hosts file looks like, though. There should be some IP attached to localhost in there.

  18. Manni says

    Wow. Interesting.
    I’d be curious to see what Vista’s hosts file looks like, though. There should be some IP attached to localhost in there.

  19. Saad Siddique says

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\tcpip6\Parameters\DisabledComponents

    i did not find the Disables Components in my Parameters. I’m still unable to solve my problem in IE, however, it’s working fine in FireFox now

  20. Saad Siddique says

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicestcpip6ParametersDisabledComponents
    i did not find the Disables Components in my Parameters. I’m still unable to solve my problem in IE, however, it’s working fine in FireFox now

  21. nats says

    HI!

    I have Vista Home Premium too. I still could not make the VSW 2008 work. I have the same problem as Siddique. I don’t see any DisabledComponents in my Registry.

    Do u know why?

    Thanks

  22. nats says

    HI!
    I have Vista Home Premium too. I still could not make the VSW 2008 work. I have the same problem as Siddique. I don’t see any DisabledComponents in my Registry.
    Do u know why?
    Thanks

  27. michal says

    I found even better way, just comment int system32/drivers/etc/ line containing “[:::1] localhost”

  28. michal says

    I found even better way, just comment int system32/drivers/etc/ line containing “[:::1] localhost”

  33. Mikael Nygaard says

    #14 is the best solution.

    Comment out the line in the host file with where ::1 is mapped to localhost. Worked straight away.

  34. Mikael Nygaard says

    #14 is the best solution.
    Comment out the line in the host file with where ::1 is mapped to localhost. Worked straight away.

  43. Richard vN says

    Ad an extra : before the ‘::1’ in the line where ::1 is mapped to localhost. Worked straight away.

    It Should be :::1 instead of ::1. A little ‘bug’ in Vista.

    ——————————————————————————–

  44. Richard vN says

    Ad an extra : before the ‘::1’ in the line where ::1 is mapped to localhost. Worked straight away.
    It Should be :::1 instead of ::1. A little ‘bug’ in Vista.
    ——————————————————————————–

  45. Back in the Vista Saddle Again says

    RE: ASP.NET Development Server Problems Under Vista

    I have wanted to be a Windows Vista user and developer since before it was released, but there always seemed like something didn’t work or some application I used kept crashing. The pure pain of the performance of Vista alone was not worth the "upgrade"

  46. Back in the Vista Saddle Again says

    RE: ASP.NET Development Server Problems Under Vista

    I have wanted to be a Windows Vista user and developer since before it was released, but there always seemed like something didn’t work or some application I used kept crashing. The pure pain of the performance of Vista alone was not worth the "upgrade"

  47. M.S. Babaei says

    I have Vista SP1

    and VS2008

    and it works…

    and I’m testing

    Vista (withou SP) with VS2005 and VS2008

    and it works fine!

    I think it’s depending on Hardware

    because one of my friends has the same problem!

  48. M.S. Babaei says

    I have Vista SP1
    and VS2008
    and it works…
    and I’m testing
    Vista (withou SP) with VS2005 and VS2008
    and it works fine!
    I think it’s depending on Hardware
    because one of my friends has the same problem!

  49. D-Man says

    Thanks Richard vN.

    I was one of the eager adopdters of Vista as I wanted to have some hands-on experience of dev’ing for the OS before it took root and I’ve had this problem for years.

    The simplicity of your solution shows how little I know about IPv6 but like Rob, I was never comfortable with the wholesale disabling of it either.

    The amazing thing is that my current installation of Vista was installed from a disc with SP1 slipstreamed in, suggesting that this ‘bug’ seems to have slipped by M$.

  50. D-Man says

    Thanks Richard vN.
    I was one of the eager adopdters of Vista as I wanted to have some hands-on experience of dev’ing for the OS before it took root and I’ve had this problem for years.
    The simplicity of your solution shows how little I know about IPv6 but like Rob, I was never comfortable with the wholesale disabling of it either.
    The amazing thing is that my current installation of Vista was installed from a disc with SP1 slipstreamed in, suggesting that this ‘bug’ seems to have slipped by M$.

  51. The Admin says

    @D-Man I just installed an additional Vista system here with SP1 slipped as you did, I had the same problem again. I really like the solution of simply adding an additional ‘:’ in the hosts file, very elegant for sure.

  52. The Admin says

    @D-Man I just installed an additional Vista system here with SP1 slipped as you did, I had the same problem again. I really like the solution of simply adding an additional ‘:’ in the hosts file, very elegant for sure.

  57. Michael Paul says

    Thank you so much! Worked for me, too. To make things perfectly clear, you want to go to C:WINDOWSsystem32driversetc and edit the "hosts" file with Notepad. In my case (running Windows XP Media Center Edition), I commented it out by using a pound sign.
    I replaced
    127.0.0.1 localhost
    with
    #127.0.0.1 localhost

  58. Michael Paul says

    Thank you so much! Worked for me, too. To make things perfectly clear, you want to go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc and edit the "hosts" file with Notepad. In my case (running Windows XP Media Center Edition), I commented it out by using a pound sign.

    I replaced

    127.0.0.1 localhost

    with

    #127.0.0.1 localhost

  59. Zaibot says

    I found another little work around that MUCH more usefull.
    Download Fiddler and set it up as proxy.
    Turn off that Firefox doesn?t use the proxy for localhost and 127.0.0.1 ofcourse. And if you have trouble reaching the server, setup a custom startpage that?s pointing to 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost. 🙂
    This way you can monitor your traffic with the development server and it also gets rid of the problem that it?s slow. 😉
    Greetz

  60. Zaibot says

    I found another little work around that MUCH more usefull.

    Download Fiddler and set it up as proxy.

    Turn off that Firefox doesn?t use the proxy for localhost and 127.0.0.1 ofcourse. And if you have trouble reaching the server, setup a custom startpage that?s pointing to 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost. 🙂

    This way you can monitor your traffic with the development server and it also gets rid of the problem that it?s slow. 😉

    Greetz

  61. Andrew says

    for me, I found that the port that the ASP.net dev server was starting on was different to the one that the browser was trying to connect to.
    make sure you check the settings of your dev server (right click the satellite icon -> properties) and check that the port # is the same as the one that gets appended to your url

  62. Andrew says

    for me, I found that the port that the ASP.net dev server was starting on was different to the one that the browser was trying to connect to.

    make sure you check the settings of your dev server (right click the satellite icon -> properties) and check that the port # is the same as the one that gets appended to your url

  65. Zalmoxis says

    Andrew, for me this is the exact situation. And I guess there is a bug in VS 2008 because it is trying to start on one port and sees that it is unavailable and then start the instance of the webserver on another port.

  66. Zalmoxis says

    Andrew, for me this is the exact situation. And I guess there is a bug in VS 2008 because it is trying to start on one port and sees that it is unavailable and then start the instance of the webserver on another port.

  71. Matt says

    You can disable IPV6 against localhost by editing the host file:
    C:WindowsSystem32driversetchosts
    ::1 localhost
    Add a # in front of this line to make it a comment. Restart your PC. Good to go.

  72. Matt says

    You can disable IPV6 against localhost by editing the host file:

    C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

    ::1 localhost

    Add a # in front of this line to make it a comment. Restart your PC. Good to go.

  79. David says

    I have the similar issue and after testing these solutions I still had the problem. When I configured IIS I had named the Binding for port 80 (default web site) with the fully qualified name for the machine (machine.company.com). I solved the issue by adding a second binding rule to port 80 with host name of localhost.

  80. David says

    I have the similar issue and after testing these solutions I still had the problem. When I configured IIS I had named the Binding for port 80 (default web site) with the fully qualified name for the machine (machine.company.com). I solved the issue by adding a second binding rule to port 80 with host name of localhost.

  95. Ali Bolourian says

    I never had this problem on VS2008 and Vista until I tried to use II7 instead of Visual studio web server and I followed instruction on VS2008 and enabled "IIS metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility" option under Windows Features and another option that I don’t remember now. The next day I started to have this problem. Of course I fixed it by disabling the line mentioned by michal, but I thought it’s worthwhile to mention what might be causing this issue.

  96. Ali Bolourian says

    I never had this problem on VS2008 and Vista until I tried to use II7 instead of Visual studio web server and I followed instruction on VS2008 and enabled "IIS metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility" option under Windows Features and another option that I don’t remember now. The next day I started to have this problem. Of course I fixed it by disabling the line mentioned by michal, but I thought it’s worthwhile to mention what might be causing this issue.

  97. Michael5 says

    Reading all of the comments is interesting. I just "upgraded" from XP Pro to Vista Home Premium and I like it. My problem with IIS 7 seems to be the opposite. I can grab my web services via "LocalHost:<port> but not via my external static IP. Any thoughts?

  98. Michael5 says

    Reading all of the comments is interesting. I just "upgraded" from XP Pro to Vista Home Premium and I like it. My problem with IIS 7 seems to be the opposite. I can grab my web services via "LocalHost:<port> but not via my external static IP. Any thoughts?

  115. johnny says

    I hope this helps someone. I had to update my hosts file and in addition i had the web site http://localhost to my local intranet sites in internet options,security,advanced,

  116. johnny says

    I hope this helps someone. I had to update my hosts file and in addition i had the web site http://localhost to my local intranet sites in internet options,security,advanced,

  117. fariz says

    Hello, according to the changes that need to be done to the host file, I’ve tried it and when I want to save, it said that the file can’t be changed. Please help.

  118. fariz says

    Hello, according to the changes that need to be done to the host file, I’ve tried it and when I want to save, it said that the file can’t be changed. Please help.

  123. Ozan says

    Wow ! I reformatted my PC couple of times before it hit me that this may be a weird problem from Microsoft and started searching. Thanks a lot !

  124. Ozan says

    Wow ! I reformatted my PC couple of times before it hit me that this may be a weird problem from Microsoft and started searching. Thanks a lot !

  125. Ahmed Abu Dagga says

    Thank you so much, I was stuch for a long time in this issue now I know the reason 🙂
    I just change the IP from ::1 to 127.0.0.1 in the host file in etc folder, and now It works fine

  126. Ahmed Abu Dagga says

    Thank you so much, I was stuch for a long time in this issue now I know the reason 🙂

    I just change the IP from ::1 to 127.0.0.1 in the host file in etc folder, and now It works fine

  127. Adrian says

    Thank you. Great post in fact brilliant post because i could not get any help from microsoft

  128. Adrian says

    Thank you. Great post in fact brilliant post because i could not get any help from microsoft

  131. the best gambling news online says

    Funny thing is though, that the new : makes Vista go completely bogus and ignore the entry.Putting a # in front of it would be better. :)Anyway, what does the ::1 stand for? It’s probably IPv6 something, but what does it mean? What does it actually do?

  132. the best gambling news online says

    Funny thing is though, that the new : makes Vista go completely bogus and ignore the entry.Putting a # in front of it would be better. :)Anyway, what does the ::1 stand for? It’s probably IPv6 something, but what does it mean? What does it actually do?

  135. sucam says

    hi,
    i am using vs 2005, my site has a lot of pages and images on the page starts with the prefix "/" that indicate root. it work fine when i deploy site on production , but it did not work in asp.net development server.
    locahost/…/pages.aspx image: "/images/logo.gif"
    so when it detect "/" it search outside the mysite directory which is the main directory of my site. how can i point to mysite.

  136. sucam says

    hi,

    i am using vs 2005, my site has a lot of pages and images on the page starts with the prefix "/" that indicate root. it work fine when i deploy site on production , but it did not work in asp.net development server.

    locahost/…/pages.aspx image: "/images/logo.gif"

    so when it detect "/" it search outside the mysite directory which is the main directory of my site. how can i point to mysite.

  137. henry says

    ASP.NET’s problem Development Server also can happen put a restriction of protocol in your antivirus, for ejemlo in NOD32 it is necessary to enable the filters of HTTP protocol and POP3 in order that it(he,she) could execute developmen server.

  138. henry says

    ASP.NET’s problem Development Server also can happen put a restriction of protocol in your antivirus, for ejemlo in NOD32 it is necessary to enable the filters of HTTP protocol and POP3 in order that it(he,she) could execute developmen server.

  139. Bob Dickow says

    This is really off topic, but I thought I’d chime in. I have installed a single web site on my IIS 7 on Vista, and it only serves a phantom page (that reads "It Works!"). This text is nowhere in my web site, and worse yet, is nowhere on my computer (calling http://localhost). Furthermore, specifying the index page brings up HTTP Error 404. Searching my computer’s file contents for ‘It Works!" brings up no matches. So, I’m stymied. I do better with IIS 5 on XP. I can’t make Vista work with IIS at all I guess. Of course, that file HAS to be here somewhere, but I can’t locate it, or any directories that might be acting as the virtual web on my machine. Search is not working right or something. Odd. But I haven’t given up yet, even after 2 days of hacking this.

  140. Bob Dickow says

    This is really off topic, but I thought I’d chime in. I have installed a single web site on my IIS 7 on Vista, and it only serves a phantom page (that reads "It Works!"). This text is nowhere in my web site, and worse yet, is nowhere on my computer (calling http://localhost). Furthermore, specifying the index page brings up HTTP Error 404. Searching my computer’s file contents for ‘It Works!" brings up no matches. So, I’m stymied. I do better with IIS 5 on XP. I can’t make Vista work with IIS at all I guess. Of course, that file HAS to be here somewhere, but I can’t locate it, or any directories that might be acting as the virtual web on my machine. Search is not working right or something. Odd. But I haven’t given up yet, even after 2 days of hacking this.

  147. Toyin says

    Thanks guys. Very useful information. However, the security settings on my windows vista would not allow me to change the host file. Please how can I beat this.
    Thanks
    Toyin

  148. Toyin says

    Thanks guys. Very useful information. However, the security settings on my windows vista would not allow me to change the host file. Please how can I beat this.

    Thanks

    Toyin