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I have this randomly occurring problem where IIS Express does not recognize when I make a change to an ASP page. It serves up the previous version of the page instead.

I can work around this problem by re-editing the page, making a small change, then undoing the change and re-saving the file. But that's annoying...

So far I've only seen this happen with Classic ASP pages, not the other files (html, js, css...) in my project. I know that IIS caches ASP pages and updates the cache when the file is updated, so something must be preventing IIS from recognizing when these files change. I just don't know what that could be.

In case it matters I'm using Visual Studio 2013, IIS Express 7.1.1557 on Windows 7.

My web.config:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <system.web>
        <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.5" />
        <customErrors mode="Off" />
    </system.web>
    <system.webServer>
        <httpErrors errorMode="Detailed" />
    </system.webServer>
</configuration>
Keith
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  • Make sure you web.config does not have output caching enabled. IIS/Express does not cache asp by default, its a feature that needs to be turned on. Share your web.config and we can get a better idea of what is poppin. – Frank Jun 07 '15 at 17:54
  • @Frank See update to question – Keith Jun 07 '15 at 19:12
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    are you sure that its IIS that is caching the page and not your browser? What happens if you include the following on the top of the page <% response.write("Time stamp:" & now()) %> Try that, and referesh the page a few times. If it doesnt change (meaning the clock is fozen) then you have output caching enabled, but looking at your web.config i would assume that its not at the site level, but at the server level. Also please try if the times freeze by adding a different querystring to the url. page.asp?test=some-random-text-to-see-if-page-loads-123423423 – Frank Jun 08 '15 at 06:01
  • @Frank It is definitely IIS, not the browser. When debugging I will see the old version of the page in the debugger. I did find that output caching is enabled in applicationHost.config so I have disabled it and I'm testing to see if that fixes the problem. – Keith Jun 08 '15 at 11:26
  • @Frank Forget what I said. The problem is still happening even with output caching disabled. I just happened to be lucky enough to avoid the problem for a week but it reared its ugly head again today. – Keith Jun 18 '15 at 18:47

3 Answers3

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I have the exact same behavior. So far, this seems to have fixed it:

In the applicationhost.config of IISExpress (%userprofile%\My Documents\IISExpress\config), under <system.webServer>, I had a caching disabled, but not kernel caching. Here is what I have now:

<caching enabled="false" enableKernelCache="false">
</caching>

So far, it seems to do the trick. I hope it will help you out as well.

It seems to have a small negative impact on performance, but in my case it is worth it.

EDIT

After using it for some time, I started getting the cached pages served again. Then I tried closing VS, make sure IISExpress was stopped, open VS again, and start the website without debugging (Ctrl+F5), and so far no caching issues.

One difference though... My version of IISExpress.exe is 8.0.8418.0 (and Visual Studio is 12.0.21005.1 REL). I hope this helps you, Keith, as I know how annoying this bug is. Good luck.

Robert
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  • Good suggestion, however it didn't solve the problem for me. – Keith Nov 17 '15 at 14:39
  • Did you try running without debug (Ctrl+F5) ? Seems to work for me. – Robert Nov 27 '15 at 14:29
  • Yep, I see the same problem whether I'm using Start Debugging or Start Without Debugging. I'm going to try upgrading my version of IIS Express though. That sounds promising, thank you. – Keith Nov 27 '15 at 14:34
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I have not experienced this problem since upgrading IIS Express from version 7 to 10 (download here).

See here for how to detect your version of IIS Express.

Community
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Keith
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0

Not only do you have to set this setting:

<caching enabled="false" enableKernelCache="false"></caching>

as Robert wrote, but the one below, too:

<section name="caching" overrideModeDefault="Deny" />

to keep caching off at all times.

Greg Greansky
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