Visual Studio 2015 can't start IIS Express

Question

When I am trying to run an ASP.Net Core project in Visual Studio 2015, a Microsoft Visual Studio dialog appears "The project doesn't know how to run the profile IIS Express".

Does anyone know anything about this message, or how to fix it? I've searched Google and the MSDN. There's nothing in the build logs, or the Windows event log.

Answer 1

This dialog showed up for me when I had migrated a project from dotnet RC1 to RC2.

Before the fix I could still run it using dotnet run and from Visual Studio choosing the profile other than "IIS Express".

I had misread this guide and forgot the .Web

\DNX\Microsoft.DNX.targets –> \DotNet.Web\Microsoft.DotNet.Web.targets

After fixing this and restarting Visual Studio(not sure if needed) I could run the project using the IIS Express profile.

Answer 2

In my case the issue was solved after added the ASP.NET and web development tool extension to my VS instalation.

Answer 3

To clarify the answer from hultqvist, it is a problem with the xproj. To fix it, edit the xproj directly and change this

<Import Project="$(VSToolsPath)\DotNet\Microsoft.DotNet.targets" 
        Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' != ''" />

to this

<Import Project="$(VSToolsPath)\DotNet.Web\Microsoft.DotNet.Web.targets" 
        Condition="'$(VSToolsPath)' != ''" />

That is, insert Web twice.

There is an associated issue in the aspnet tooling repo.

Answer 4

I had the same issue and found a very simple solution for Visual Studio 2017. In Visual Studio 2017 go to Solution Explorer then right click on your project file. In the menu you will see "Set as StartUp Project". If you can select it then select it. Now run your project again.

Answer 5

I had a similar issue but with "MyProjectName" instead of IIS Express. In my case, I was trying to start as a standalone application, so I cleaned the launchSettings.json

I inadvertently changed the "commandName" parameter from "Project" to "MyProjectName" and that caused the popup to show up.

Resetting it back to "Project" solved my issue, silly me 😁

Answer 6

I had a similar issue, In my case ASP.NET and web development is enabled but Development time IIS support is not checked in the optional sections.

Once I enable the Development time IIS support solved my issue.

Answer 7

You can get this error with RTM if <BaseIntermediateOutputPath gets corrupted or is incorrect in your .xproj file.

Answer 8

I had this same issue and after digging around for a while I discovered that I had dotnet preview v1.0.0-preview2 installed under Programs Files (x86) and a non-preview version in x64. I think VS is launching the x86 (preview) version but expecting to see the full version. To fix this, I did the following.

• from programs and feature uninstall every visible dotnet core. (note: this did not remove the x86 preview)
• go to https://www.microsoft.com/net/download/core#/sdk and install BOTH x86 and x64 SDK packages
• open command line and from the root directory check run: dotnet --version (at the time of writting it was 1.0.4
• fire up .net core project in VS 2017 and run.

When I did all of the above, I was able to start up the site in IIS Express from VS.

Answer 9

This happened to me after a failed update of visual studio 2017 15.9.4 Setup completed with warnings and when I checked the problems saw that .NET core SDK 2.1 installation is failed.

I will try to install it manually. Otherwise currently the only solution I found is to uninstall visual studio and re-install it.

Answer 10

In visual Studio 2017, i fixed this error by doing the following two steps. I went to add or remove a program in windows, and deleted everything ending with ".net". I then reinstalled them in the visual studio installer. Then loading the project again produced a new error, which condiosluzverde provided the solution to here: How Can I Fix the Microsoft Visual Studio Error: "Package Did Not Load Correctly"?

Answer 11

Same thing happened to me, my project was working fine. I didn't do any RC1 to RC2 update & this popup appeared from nowhere.

I fixed the problem by updating visual studio. You can also consider repairing VS.