Using port 80 with IIS Express inside of VS2010

Question

I've got an app that I am trying to run on my dev system under IIS Express from VS2010 that I need to use port 80 for, but I can't get it to work. I've looking up information talking about port 80 being reserved. http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/1005/handling-url-binding-failures-in-iis-express/

But even after doing that I still get an error from vs2010 that says "Unable to launch the IIS Express Web server. Port '80' is in use."

I don't know what else to try. I've used Process Hacker to track down port 80 and it seems to be used by System running on process ID 4, which is the NT Kernel and System process. I don't know if that would prevent me from using the port though. I thought maybe that was a result of http.sys holding that port so nothing else could use it?

I did managed to get IIS Express to run on port 80 by modifying the default binding of the C:\Users\[MyUser]\Documents\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.config file, and while I can start IIS Express manually this way, VS then gets an error because a binding already exists on that port. So I change it back to 8080, create the virtual directory using the button within VS2010 (which I'm guessing is the same as entering a site binding) but I still get an error when I go to debug the application. Is there something hardcoded in VS2010 that won't let it start IIS Express on port 80?

UPDATE & FIX: Ok, so I found a few more things to check and I did resolve my problem but not completely. One post suggested making sure I did not have SQL reporting services installed as it can monitor on port 80, I used to have it installed but not anymore and was not the problem I was encountering. I did however realize that I have WebDeploy installed. It was bundled with the VS2010 SP1 bundle from the Web Platform Installer. This is fine as I do want the client tools from WebDeploy, but it also installed the agent on my system which was monitoring on port 80. I went to my list of services and stopped the Web Deploy Agent Service. Soon as I did this I can now use port 80 for IIS Express from within VS2010.

New Issue related to running on port 80 in IIS Express However my application is an MVC3 App, and I've run into a problem because the MVC3 isn't capturing my request at all, so It's not firing my controller actions or anything like that, but a txt file in the root of my app can be reached so I know it's my site that IIS Express is serving up. Anyone have any issues running an MVC3 (I don't know if it's exclusive to MVC3 or not) in IIS Express on port 80?

Answer 1

Just posting my own answer for this problem so I can mark the question as answered. Check http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/1005/handling-url-binding-failures-in-iis-express/ Disable the Web Deploy Agent service if you have it installed.

Answer 2

in my case i solved the issue by stop "SQL Server Reporting Services"

you can find it in

control panel -> sevices

Answer 3

THANK YOU very much for you discovering of the 'Web Deploy Agent' service! This is something that only recently got turned on as I had all this working perfectly and just today installed the updated version of IIS Express, and ran into the exact same problem with port 80. So now that I have turned off the Web Deploy agent, my system works correctly again.

As for ASP.NET MVC3, that works great for me on port 80 and port 443. It was quite a bit of work to bind both those ports so that IIS Express was able to use them as a normal user (most of it from the link you posted above), and to install the SSL certificate we use. I manually created all the entries in my applicationhost.config file to get this working, and the appropriate sites section is below:

    <sites>
        <site name="PHP: A Main" id="2144116512">
            <application path="/">
                <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\var\www\amain\www" />
                <virtualDirectory path="/images" physicalPath="C:\var\www\images" />
            </application>
            <application path="/admin">
                <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="C:\var\www\amain\www\admin" />
            </application>
            <bindings>
                <binding protocol="http" bindingInformation="*:80:test.amainhobbies.com" />
                <binding protocol="https" bindingInformation="*:443:test.amainhobbies.com" />
            </bindings>
        </site>
        <siteDefaults>
            <logFile logFormat="W3C" directory="%IIS_USER_HOME%\Logs" />
            <traceFailedRequestsLogging directory="%IIS_USER_HOME%\TraceLogFiles" enabled="true" maxLogFileSizeKB="1024" />
        </siteDefaults>
        <applicationDefaults applicationPool="Clr4IntegratedAppPool" />
        <virtualDirectoryDefaults allowSubDirConfig="true" />
    </sites>

Note that my site is a combined PHP and ASP.NET MVC3 site, as we are in the process of re-writing the entire thing to run on ASP.NET MVC3, so most of the site is still PHP but lots of new stuff is now running ASP.NET MVC3, and that stuff works for me.

Does your IIS Express work properly with MVC3 outside of Visual Studio, or is the MVC3 stuff just not working at all?