Error - Unable to access the IIS metabase

Question

After installing Visual Studio 2012 and opening my solution I get a series of errors in this form:

The Web Application Project Foo is configured to use IIS.
Unable to access the IIS Metabase. You do not have sufficient privilege to access IIS web sites on your machine.

I get this for each of our web applications.

---

Things I have tried:

1. Running Visual Studio as Administrator
2. Running aspnet_regiis.exe -ga MyUserName
3. Running aspnet_regiis.exe -i

These seem to be common solutions for this problem but I have not had any success with them.

Is there anything else I can try to do?

Answer 1

On Windows 8 Pro:

%systemroot%\inetsrv\config

On Windows 7 and 8.1 and 10

%systemroot%\System32\inetsrv\config 

(Where %systemroot% is usually C:\Windows)

Navigate to the appropriate location above in Windows Explorer. You will be blocked access with a popup which says:

"You don't have access to this folder - Click continue to permanently get access to this folder"

Click 'continue' for this folder, and with the Export folder underneath. I changed the shortcut back to "Run as me" (a member of the domain and local administrators ) and was able to open and deploy the solution.

Answer 2

I think you are not running visual studio with administrator permissions. Look that:

http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/rick/archive/2012/10/04/unable-to-access-the-iis-metabase.aspx

To quote

The solution to this is simple: start your Visual Studio with "Run as Administrator". You can do this by right clicking the shortcut and selecting "Run as Administrator".

Answer 3

I think we encountered a similar problem at work. For us, the solution was to go into Control Panel -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows Features on or off... inside that, we had to select Internet Information Services -> Web Management Tools -> IIS 6 Management Compatibility -> IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility.

Give that a try and let me know if it helps!

Note: We're running IIS 7.5 on Windows 7 using both Visual Studio 2005 and 2010 and doing stuff with super-old-school WebServices (.asmx)...

Answer 4

I resolved this issue by granting IIS AppPool identity permissions to the %systemroot%\inetsrv\config

Answer 5

If you are working on a project which does not require the use of IIS, then a workaround to open the project with this error is to simply right click on the unloaded project and click edit, search for:

<ProjectExtensions>
    <VisualStudio>
      <FlavorProperties GUID="">
        <WebProjectProperties>
          <UseIIS>True</UseIIS>
        </WebProjectProperties>
      </FlavorProperties>
    </VisualStudio>
  </ProjectExtensions>
</Project>

and set USEIIS to false

<UseIIS>False</UseIIS>

reload the project by right clicking on it after saving changes.

Answer 6

I have had two seperate types of problem lead to this error, and thought I'd share...

1. The directory was on an network share and due to UAC restrictions, was 
   unable to be accessed -- even when running as an admin.
2. The directory was on a drive that didn't exist...

Both of these stem from an unfortunate (imo) choice by MS to put things in the Documents or My Document directory, combinee with really lousy error messages. In both of the above cases the fundamental problem was that the IISExpress Config file goes in My Documents, and it either didn't exist or couldn't be accessed.

Answer 7

Thank you to everyone that answered. Since this was closed for a long time I couldn't provide much feedback, but I did eventually fix my problem. I tried many of these other solutions and they didn't fix my issue, but I'm sure they help when the root cause is different.

My Solution

I solved this problem by turning off the IIS and .Net Framework features within Windows 7 and then turning them back on. It seems like this re-installation is what fixed my issue. I still don't know what caused the problem, but at least one other developer on my team had the same issue.

Answer 8

Navigating to folder: %systemroot%\System32\inetsrv\config presents a security dialog. Click continue and this may resolve the issue. This has worked on two separate Win 10/VS 2017/IIS machines.

Answer 9

On a windows 81, from an admin command prompt, use:

icacls "C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config" /t /grant "IIS AppPool\DefaultAppPool":(R)

Then go back in VS, right click on the failed project, choose Reload.

Credit to: IIS7 Permissions Overview - ApplicationPoolIdentity

Answer 10

I had this problem - the symptoms were the same, but the issue I had was that I had set the "My Documents" folder to be on a network share, and the share was not accessible.

The root problem was that the IIS config files located at %USERPROFILE%\Documents are not accessible. Once I changed the "My Documents" folder location (I modified the reg value), it started working again.

I know that this may not be a common scenario that you might run into, but I've posted it here because it gives the same symptoms.

Answer 11

I came across this today and fixed the problem by removing the IISUrl from the Project file:

1. Right click project
2. Click Edit

3. Delete the following line:

    <IISUrl>http://localhost:xxxxx </IISUrl>
   

4. Reload project

5. Now add a new IIS virtual directory by right clicking Project > Properties > Web and selecting Use Local IIS Web Server (Uncheck Use IIS Express) and clicking the Create Virtual Directory button.

Answer 12

You might run across this problem and have same problem as me. I "solved" it before and then power outage and computer crashed, not sure why a registry setting reverted but it is the SOURCE of my problem.

1. I tried all the running as adminstrator
2. All the IIS / IIS express re-installs.
3. Various "hacks"

Came down to having to fix the registry again.

1. Could not as administrator even open regedit (Need to access registry since problem is not with gpedit.msc admin template )

2. UnHookExec.inf on desktop

Just save UnHookExec.inf and install it by right clicking and selecting install. Installing the file will not show any popup or notice box. http://www.tweakandtrick.com/2011/04/enable-regedit-registry-editor.html

3. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Personal pointing to non-existant fileshare. Changing that to local path solved this problem for me. – Pasi Savolainen Jul 14 '14 at 8:41

(changed from \\cs2data\home\stickelt\my documents to c:\dev )

Now ALL is good and Visual Studio opened solution with 15 projects and connects to IIS and does not complain about not being able to access iis metadata

I had never ran into this before, as nobody at current job had this problem ( many have been here a long time, some got clones of other machines that "worked" and many are on another domain etc.. )

Answer 13

I just had this issue today and I found that I didn't open VS as 'Run as Administrator'. After doing this, I was able to publish the Service.

Answer 14

If you have administrator permissions, Right Click to Visual Studio icon > properties and then advanced, "Run as administrator" check. You can run visaul studio as administrator directly anymore. This way, formal and so basic.

Answer 15

In addition to the answer by @nologo, I also had to use IIS. So I changed the

<UseIIS>True</UseIIS>

to 'False' first.

• Opened the solution and ensured that the project could be loaded.
• Close solution and that instance of Visual Studio
• Change the value to 'True' again
• Open the solution. This time, I didn't get any error/warning. I could also run with Ctrl+F5 or F5 without any problem while my project was mapped to an IIS website.

Answer 16

Changing this key worked for me:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Personal

The location didn't exist.

Answer 17

Go to the root directory of your project and find the following file:

YourProjectName.csproj.user - inside it, make sure UseIISExpress is set to false:

<UseIISExpress>false</UseIISExpress>

If that alone doesn't work try the following as well and try again:

YourProjectName.csproj - inside the main project file, make sure both UseIIS and UseIISExpress are set to false:

<UseIIS>True</UseIIS>
<UseIISExpress>false</UseIISExpress>

After changing these I was able to load the project again.

Note: Make sure you run your VS as an Administrator, as mentioned in the other answers.

Answer 18

I also had a similar problem. My solution is an extension to the answer "Run as admin" which I hope someone might find useful.

I was running VS2012 and almost every time I had to do the Right Click, Run As Administrator. I got tired of this so instead I went into its properties on the shortcut, clicked advanced, and then clicked the "Run as Administrator" option. Now VS2012 always runs as administrator whenever I open it from that shortcut.

The from that shortcut bit is important. I proceeded to branch my project, and download the branch to a new local folder. Then, when I opened it from the shortcut I had no problem. But if I went directly into the folder, and ran the project locally without the shortcut, it did not run as administrator and I got this error.

Once I opened VS2012 as usual first, then using File/Open/Project It worked again no problem. (because I was running as admin). But I wasn't running as admin when I opened the solution using windows file manager.

The other suggestions seem somewhat extreme, but this is pretty simple so I would tend to give this a try first.

Hope this was helpful.

Answer 19

This seems like one of those "All errors lead to this message" type of bugs.

Mine was that the App Pool was just turned off. I turned it back on, and everything worked fine.

Answer 20

One more thing you could try:

• Check if you have pending Windows updates.
• If you do, please reboot before trying anything else.

I tend to never shut down my machine, so I had plenty of them waiting for a reboot. And that fixed it.

Answer 21

I tried everything above. The credit goes to all of the responses above. Having tried all of the suggestions on their own, I just assembled this combination of suggestions in an order that made sense to me. Note my Documents folder is on a shared drive. The subst/IISExpress stuff is not applicable unless you're in the same boat.

• Configure VS to run as admin
• Uninstall IIS via Add/Remove Programs, Windows Features
• Reboot
• Run WinRAR or something similar as admin and archive C:\windows\system32\inetsrv\
• Run cmd as admin and rmdir /s c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\ to completely remove all traces of the last install. Leave elevated cmd prompt open for later.
• Reinstall IIS with IIS 6 Metabase compatibility (doubt this was necessary)
• Leave Default AppPool and Default Website as-is (I had previously deleted both)
• Ran C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe -ga MYDOMAIN\scottt732
• Ran C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

Also, because my Documents folder is on a share drive, I was having IIS Express issues. I don't use/like IIS Express, but Visual Studio complained about it.

• From elevated cmd prompt, ran subst U: c:\Temp. Created C:\Temp\Documents\ and copied the IISExpress folder from my U drive.
• Created CustomUserHome key in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\IISExpress with C:\Temp\Documents\IISExpress
• This allowed me to get Visual Studio to open my web projects and edit the properties. I tweaked the projects to store web server settings in a user file and adjusted it to use a Custom URL (not sure if this was necessary)
• I may/may not have to run the subst command each time I restart. Don't care.

And after throwing in the towel 3 times and spending roughly ~6 hours I can open web projects in Visual Studio (2015 Update 2).

Answer 22

I just had the same issue with me today. And I found it annoying. Though I have other two websites already under development from the same IIS but still was not able to create new site. Strange, but I did this.

• Delete the site from IIS
• Create new site, give it a name "new_site"
• Select Application Pool other than the site name itself. So it wont be messing up with default settings.
• Keep IP "unassigned" if you are running it from same machine
• give it some unused port
• Run Visual Studio as "Run as Administrator" by right-clicking on VS executable shortcut.
• You are done!

You do not need to turn off/re-install anything other than what I have stated since it works.

Let me know if anybody had the same issue just like me and solved the same way. I think it was not the issue but a wrong way of creating website on localhost which Visual Studio rejects to open.

I hope this will help newbies.

Answer 23

1. Create a shortcut to the "devenv.exe"
2. select the "Run as administrator" option for the shortcut
3. doble click on the short cut and reopen your project

Answer 24

I had the same problem after Adding feature from this link afterward I followed this article the issue was gone.

Answer 25

I did a repair of Visual Studio 2015 to solve this. The repair took a long time, but it solved the issue while doing much of the above did not. I am running Win 7 enterprise.

Answer 26

Open visual studio command prompt and type below command and run

aspnet_regiis -ga machinename\ASPNET

After running the above command Reset the IIS and test the application that resolve your issue.

If above command doesn’t resolve your problem then try to run below command in visual studio command prompt:-

aspnet_regiis -i

Alternatively we can run above command from our windows command prompt also

Go to the Start menu and open Run and enter and click OK

%windir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe –I

After that Reset the IIS and test the application that resolves your issue

Answer 27

In Visual Studio 2015: I changed UseIIS in .csproj file to false and it worked for me.

<UseIIS>False</UseIIS>

Answer 28

In my message, beside complaining about "Unable to access the IIS metabase", it also mentions can't access "<IISUrl>http://localhost:6416/</IISUrl>". Right click on the unload project, click Edit, find the line "<IISUrl>http://localhost:6416/</IISUrl>", comment it out. Reload and it should work. This has to do with administrator doesn't have permission to access that address.

Answer 29

I had a similar problem. Visual Studio would not load any web projects and showed the error: creation of virtual directory <myproj:myport> failed. Unable to access the IIS metabase.

In my case it was actually IISExpress that was at the root of the problem. Right clicking on IIS Express in Programs and Features in the control panel and choosing repair fixed the issue in less than two minutes.

Answer 30

I'm using Win 8 Pro and VS 2013. After trying everything in this page... I simply reinstalled IIS Express 8 and everything works fine now (even without running as an admin).

My conclusion is that this is a rather generic error and there are multiple root causes.