Conflicting versions error adding ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Role to Windows Azure project

Question

I am getting the following error creating a new project after installing Windows Azure Tools 1.4:

Conflicting versions of ASP.NET Web Pages detected: specified version is "1.0.0.0", but the version in bin is "2.0.0.0". To continue, remove files from the application's bin directory or remove the version specification in web.config.

Answer 1

You'll find you have an assembly in your bin folder that is a different version from the one mentioned in the web.config. The weird bit is that it may not be the assembly that the message suggests. It may be a descendent of that.

I had this problem whereby it claimed version of System.Web.WebPages in the bin folder was 2.0.0.0 but it was definitely 1.0.0.0 when I checked. It then turned out that it was System.Web.WebPages.Deployment that was version 2.0.0.0. After removing that assembly the error went away. I wrote a blog post on this: Conflicting versions of ASP.NET Web Pages detected