Configuring IIS Express fails with configuration file error

Question

I got this error when I created a website in Visual Studio 2013:

File name: redirection.config

Error: Cannot read configuration file

Answer 1

I had the similar issue could not even start a web project in vs 2013 So i tried the following

Unable to create a new web project in Visual Studio 2013

Answer 2

Had same issue in visual-studio 2015. Tried many solutions, used Process Monitor to identify a missing directory structure, copied the 'config' folder -

C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Express\ -> C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\IDE\

Also using the change iis express user home fix -

eg. C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Express\iisexpress.exe /userhome:c:\temp\iisexpress

Need to delete existing iisexpress folder, usually in [home]\documents folder.

Answer 3

I had the same problem. I looked in the file, and it was corrupted, only filled with NUL.

Fortunately I was able to recover the same file from my old PC:

<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <section name="configurationRedirection" />
    </configSections>
    <configProtectedData>
        <providers>
            <add name="IISRsaProvider" type="" description="Uses RsaCryptoServiceProvider to encrypt and decrypt" keyContainerName="iisConfigurationKey" cspProviderName="" useMachineContainer="true" useOAEP="false" />
        </providers>
    </configProtectedData>
    <configurationRedirection />
</configuration>

Probably you can even leave the providers tag empty.