Visual Studio 2010 Web deployment task failed

Question

I am trying to use VS2010's 1-Click Publish feature to deploy a test site from my laptop to my server. I have the firewall turned off on both machines and the MS Deployment Service is up and running on both my laptop and the server.

However, when I try and publish from VS2010 on my laptop I get the following error:

Error 1 Web deployment task failed.(Remote agent (URL https://192.168.1.181/:8172/msdeploy.axd?site=LocationsTest) could not be contacted. Make sure the remote agent service is installed and started on the target computer.)
The requested resource does not exist, or the requested URL is incorrect.
Error details:
Remote agent (URL https://192.168.1.181/:8172/msdeploy.axd?site=LocationsTest) could not be contacted. Make sure the remote agent service is installed and started on the target computer.
An unsupported response was received. The response header 'MSDeploy.Response' was '' but 'v1' was expected.
The remote server returned an error: (404) Not Found. 0 0 Test.Web

Any idea what I am doing wrong here?

score 75 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 17 '17 at 22:48

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Restart visual studio.

I've had this one come up on a few occasions after having just successfully deployed a WebApp on a server running IIS 7.5. Obviously since a deployment/publishing was done successfully on the server just before this error came up, there was very little that could have gone wrong on the server setup/configuration (unless the previous successful deployment did something horribly wrong and removed some configuration parameters on the server).

After having rebooted the server, checked that Web Management service and Web Deployment service were running correctly, and verified from cUrl tool that a GET of the MsDeploy.axd was successful there was only one thing left to do. Restart Visual Studio. Magically post restart of VS publish started working again. All on its own. Magical stuff, this Web Deployment :)

edited Sep 17 '17 at 22:48

Shimmy Weitzhandler

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answered Aug 01 '11 at 06:29

bhavinb

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EVERYONE SHOULD TRY THIS FIRST BEFORE JUMPING THROUGH SERVER CONFIGURATION HOOPS! – Khalid Abuhakmeh Aug 31 '11 at 18:28
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Restart Visual Studio... simple! – Chase Florell Sep 01 '11 at 20:36
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rebooted the server not worked. deleted publish.xml not worked. restart the vs started. hell yeah thanks :) – zer0w1dthspace Dec 11 '11 at 14:44
too simple to be true, but it is :P – Tomasz Maj Dec 18 '12 at 08:47
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This is why computers suck. FYI - I didn't get a 404 error, and if I navigate to the Msdeploy.axd URL directly, it doesn't respond (leading me to think this was a server problem), but sure enough: restarted VS, and it deploys successfully. – gregmac Jun 04 '13 at 15:30
Worked for me also, i had a process on the server which have probably saturated the number of connection, rebooting it freed everything and the deploy worked as usual, THANKS! – Mosè Bottacini Dec 02 '15 at 11:15

score 40 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 11 '13 at 08:18

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Make sure you have the WMSvc Service (Web Management Service) set to 'Auto' (and started) so it's on when you restart & check out this link

edited Oct 11 '13 at 08:18

Andre Lombaard

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answered Jun 01 '10 at 17:18

beatn1ck

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Note - Service name: 'MsDepSvc' - Display name" 'Web Deployment Agent Service' – Kevin McKinley Jul 02 '10 at 23:20
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Look at solution below, just as important. – Dan Doyon Dec 08 '11 at 19:05

score 18 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 29 '11 at 19:07

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Make sure you have set Site/Application correctly in publish profile: Publish profile dialog in Visual Studio 2010

You get the same error message if you spell site or application name wrong.

answered Mar 29 '11 at 19:07

Pavel Chuchuva

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This was my needful, we had a system that was setup differently (than it should be) and I was going frikkin bonkers. – Dan Doyon Dec 08 '11 at 18:25
Pffft. "You get the same error message if you spell site or application name wrong." I'm such an idiot. – Brad Crandell May 17 '12 at 16:14
Yeah, if you wrongly thought like I did that you could setup a fresh server with web deploy -- WRONG. You need to at least rename "Default Web Site" to the actual website you would like to publish. (Or create a new website matching that name.) I was thinking when I published all of this would be done for me, but instead the publish just failed... – Mason G. Zhwiti Mar 05 '13 at 01:16

score 13 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 13 '12 at 16:25

Although a lot of different unrelated things can contribute to getting the 404, I solved it for my by.

When installing/reinstalling the WebDeploy installer, choose Custom/Change and then ensure that 'Management Service Delegation UI' is one of the installed options, it is not installed by default, but is required for WebDeploy to work (installer bug).
Use the new Management Service Delegation icon in the Server node of the IIS manager to add the 'Deploy Applications with Content' role, accepting it's default settings. But you may also want to specify a "Run As" setting with a user that has rights to modify IIS settings.
Restart the Web Management Service.

After this, everything works fine. Assuming the Web Management Service is setup correctly (mine is configured to accept remote connections, the firewall port was opened, and the user I'm uploading with was added to every single Site that I want to deploy to (using the IIS Manager Permissions icon in each Site node in the IIS Manager)).

+1 for Management Service Delegation UI. M$ lamers leaving common features disabled by default... — Tomas, Nov 07 '12 at 12:54

score 11 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 31 '12 at 14:59

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We found the issue was because WebDeploy was installed before the Web Management Service feature was enabled on a Windows 2008 server. After Web Management Service is installed, uninstall Web Deploy fully. Then resinstall and make sure all components of the package are selected.

Following the reinstallation we were immediately able to publishing to the server from my local machine, and also from our CI.

A couple of points to note after reading the other answers:

If you are getting a 404 error the problem is not one of security.
We did not have to restart Visual Studio for this change to take effect.
Reinstallation will kick off the services in automatic mode, do not adust this setting.

answered Mar 31 '12 at 14:59

Nick

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To add to this, I had a similar issue but it worked for me after restarting the various services plus IIS on the server. Recommend installing the Management Service before Web Deploy in future! – randomsequence Jun 07 '12 at 11:25
The same problem here, WebDeploy must be installed after Web Management Service, now the error changed to unauthorized user which can be fixed, thanks Nick – Mohsen Afshin Sep 03 '12 at 06:30

score 4 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 20 '12 at 19:55

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I was able to fix the same issue when I changed the "Service URL" which uses "Windows Management Service" from:

https://ExampleURL:8172/msdeploy.axd?site=SiteName

to this which uses "Remote Agent Service" instead:

http://ExampleURL

It worked just fine after that.

answered Jul 20 '12 at 19:55

WVDominick

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Confirming...this worked great for me as well in **Visual Studio 2013**. I ended up [reinstalling **Web Deploy**](http://stackoverflow.com/a/13871041/175679) and it took care of this issue. I can now use the first format and the second format equally without issue. – SliverNinja - MSFT Jan 28 '14 at 21:28
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Worked for me too. Tnx! – Gašper Sladič Mar 18 '14 at 08:26

score 2 · Answer 7 · edited Oct 11 '13 at 08:41

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I've installed a couple of web servers and I keep getting this issue, so I'm posting my answer here so that I find it when I Google the problem.

Basically I always install Web Deploy 3 from the Web Platform Installer. This is the first mistake. For some reason this only installs half the stuff you need. If you have installed this, uninstall it and download the Web Deploy installer. Then choose "Complete" install.

If you are following this guide

Then disregard option 1. It's a trap

Start reading again from "2. Download the Web Deploy installer ..."

edited Oct 11 '13 at 08:41

Andre Lombaard

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answered May 27 '13 at 14:28

Mike the Tike

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Well to be fair the Web Platform installer has the downloads for the missing pieces. You can install web deploy 3.5 on its own, but there is also Web Deploy 3.5 for Hosting Servers and Web Deploy 3.5 without bundled sql suppot (latest) – The Muffin Man Jan 20 '14 at 22:54

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Feb 08 '12 at 03:03

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I got this error because I changed my password. The deployment wizard still saved my old password, after retyped my password, everything works fine now.

answered Feb 08 '12 at 03:03

Adamy

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Hahaha this was exactly what happened to me. Amazing that we faced this situation almost at the same time and nobody else had commented this issue – aleafonso Feb 08 '12 at 11:48

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Aug 14 '12 at 20:27

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Silly me, I didn't have .NET 4 installed on the server

answered Aug 14 '12 at 20:27

AMissico

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RaSor · Answer 10 · 2012-10-10T09:27:44.577

I got 404 from a IE browser from https:// servername:8172/MsDeploy.axd

But Chrome did not make trouble.

This can be the first test to see if you can reach the Web Management service on the server at all. In other words: When chome worked (it responded with a blank page), then you have hole through to the service on the server.

Still you also need to have permission to deploy to the specific site. In IIS find the site and do that in "IIS Manager Permissions" under Management.

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Aug 18 '12 at 22:03

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Like a dummy, this error was throwing for me because I hadn't installed the Remote Web Agent as part of the Web Deployment Tool available here.

answered Aug 18 '12 at 22:03

sewershingle

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score 0 · Answer 12 · answered Apr 28 '14 at 04:32

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Even though all required software are installed I had similar error. I noticed that the service URL didn't prefixed with http://. Once prefixed it works well.

answered Apr 28 '14 at 04:32

Sundar

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score 0 · Answer 13 · edited Jul 06 '15 at 18:59

I was getting similar errors from VS 2013 and found a fix I did not see mentioned any of the other answers.

Errors:

The underlying connection was closed
Unable to read data from the transport connection: An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host, from the build server (TFS 2010).

Fix:

The fix in my case was to re-enable TLS 1.0 on the target. It's a registry key but I am using the free IISCrypto applet for this.

score 0 · Answer 14 · answered May 17 '11 at 09:55

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This same message would occur almost at random when publishing projects from visual studio 2010.

The fix was to delete the $projectname.Publish.xml file (in the root directory of the project) and re-create it.

answered May 17 '11 at 09:55

maxp

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score 0 · Answer 15 · answered Oct 18 '11 at 13:17

If you are using an SSL certificate you should go into Management Service under the IIS Manager section of Server Manager and stop the service, select the correct certificate and then start the service again. This is what worked for me (I was getting Forbidden message).

Visual Studio 2010 Web deployment task failed

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