Has anyone else been able to debug a AJAX-enabled Web Application (not website) using IIS7 (in Vista Ultimate) instead of the built in web server? My project requires that I use both WAP (web application project) and debug against II7.

When I hit the start button in VS2005, I get the following message:

"Unable to start debugging on the web server. The web server is not configured correctly. See help for common configuration errors. Running the web page outside of the debugger may provider further information."

Clicking the help button further reduces the error message to simply:

"Error: The web server is not configured correctly"

Here's what I've done up to this point:

1) I've executed the VS2005 shortcut with "Run As Administrator" in Vista Ultimate

2) I have 'Windows Authentication' enabled in IIS7

3) I have the IIS6 compatibility metabase, etc installed

4) I've tried switching my application pool from integrated to classic.

5) Extra: I'm running VS2005 SP1 with the Vista performance hotfix installed.

Even with all those commonly recommended fixes, I still get the error message listed above. And it has specifically to do with the AJAX extensions and WAP (not websites). I'm able to debug a non-AJAX web application project just fine.

 UPDATE: I had a friend replicate the problem on his own PC. It specifically has to do with AJAX related tags in the web.config for a Web Application Project (WAP). Remove those (which disables AJAX) and it works fine. We also confirmed that this is not a problem in VS2008 WAP with AJAX. So VS2005, IIS7, WAP, AJAX debugging specifically cause the problem. And just what I was needing (lucky me)! So this looks like a real issue for Microsoft to address.

 Any ideas? Is this an issue that needs to be brought to Microsoft's attention?

 Thanks in advance!

 Chris

Hi,

Please try to change the Application pool to "Classic .NET AppPool" from "DefaultAppPool" by the following steps:

Open IIS Manager
1. Select the web application
2. Click "Basic Settings" from Actions tab
3. Change the value from "DefaultAppPool" to "Classic .NET AppPool"
4. Restart the website to apply the changes.

You can also get more information about Debugging an ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX-Enabled Application in Visual Studio 2005 on Windows Vista / IIS 7 by http://blogs.conchango.com/howardvanrooijen/archive/2007/03/16/Debugging-an-ASP.NET-2.0-AJAX_2D00_Enabled-Application-in-Visual-Studio-2005-on-Windows-Vista-_2F00_-IIS-7.aspx

If this doesn’t help you, please feel free to let me know.

I hope this helps.

Thomas,

 Thanks for the reply, but if you'll notice my point #4 above, I said the following:

"4) I've tried switching my application pool from integrated to classic." <-- and to add to that, yes I've recycled IIS afterwards.

As to that link you've sent, I've seen that and his fix doesn't work with myself or any of the friends who have replicated this problem. It appears on that page that he might be running against the virtual web server instead of going into project properties and specifying that it run against an IIS7 virtual directory (even though the subject of the post casually mentions IIS7 in it's title, but not in the body of the blog post).

A good test to run: Find a friend with a clean install of Vista Ultimate, and go through all those steps I listed one-by-one, making sure to set the WAP project to use IIS and not the virtual web server, and I suspect you'll run into the same problem. My friend was able to replicate the problem on a 'non-clean' Vista install...so the clean install may not be as important.

Thanks for the trying to help though! I need any help/leads I can get at this point!

Chris