Attach Debugger to IIS instance

Question

I have IIS 5.1 on a XP machine, and visual studio 2005. How do I go about attaching my debugger to IIS instance.

BTW: I'm not seeing the IIS process within the running processes or probably I don't know what to look for .

Answer 1

In Visual Studio:

1. Click "Debug" from the menu bar
2. Click "Attach to Process"
3. Check the "Show processes from all users" checkbox in the bottom left corner
4. Select aspnet_wp.exe, w3p.exe, or w3wp.exe from the process list
5. Click "Attach"

Answer 2

Just to clarify Jimmie R. Houts answer…

If you want to debug the web application VS and IIS you can do the following:

1. Host the site inside IIS (virtual directory etc).

2. Then in VS2005 do this:

   • Right Click on Web Project → Properties → Start options → Use Custom Server → Base URL → Enter Site Address as Hosted in IIS.
   • Hit F5 and you will be able to Debug your code

Same works for VS 2008 also.

Answer 3

I'm running Windows 7 with IIS Version 7.5 and I also needed to tick the "Show processes from all users" and "Show processes in all sessions" boxes - at the bottom of the "Attach to Process" dialog.

Also I had put my app in a specific App Pool which means you can then see it labeled against the w3wp.exe.

Answer 4

The IIS process is aspnet_wp.exe.

In fact, attaching to the aspnet_wp.exe process is what VS does when you have your project set to use IIS for debugging.

Answer 5

The possible names of the ASP.NET process:

• w3wp.exe is IIS 6.0 and later.
• aspnet_wp.exe is earlier versions of IIS.
• iisexpress.exe is IISExpress.
• dotnet.exe is ASP.NET Core.
• inetinfo.exe is older ASP applications running in-process.

From Find the name of the ASP.NET process

Answer 6

You'll also need to open Internet Information Service From Control Panel > Administrative Tools. Right click the web site in question, click the home directory tab, and select the configuration button. This will open a new form with three tabs - click the debugging one and select the two options in the debugging flag section. This is also necessary to debug.

Answer 7

Using an Attach to IIS plugin (VS2015, VS2017) plugin saves a few clicks - especially when dealing with an ecosystem of IIS hosted sites (one frontend with multiple backend services say)

Answer 8

If you see the process [e.g. IIS Worker Process (w3wp.exe)] running is Task Manager, but not in the list of processes in debug > attach to process, you might need to run Visual Studio as administrator.