How can I restart IIS Express within Visual Studio?

Question

We are currently heavily tweaking applicationhost.config files within our Visual Studio solutions in order to get additional host header bindings up and running.

Is there a way to quickly restart IIS Express from Visual Studio without having to start a debug session? The changes in applicationhost.config are only picked up after a restart.

Answer 1

You can close it on the system tray or killing its process at the Task Manager and to run it again you just need to use iisexpress exe, it's usually at C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Express\iisexpress.exe or C:\Program Files\IIS Express\iisexpress.exe if you use 32bit Windows.

Answer 2

Option 1:

1. Right Click on IISExpress icon in system tray
2. Click on name of running project
3. Click "Stop Site"

Option 2:

1. Open Task Manager (Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc)
2. Right Click on 'iisexpress.exe'
3. Click 'End process tree'