Unable to run migrated web application in VS2013

Question

I have an ASP.Net web application developed in Visual Studio 2008 (.Net 3.5). I have copied this solution to another root folder (both on my Win7 64b machine) and upgraded the copy to VS2013 (Professional) and .Net451, but when I try to debug the web app in VS2013 I get an Access Denied error ("Unauthorized: Logon failed due to server configuration. Verify that you have permission to view this directory or page based on the credentials you supplied and the authentication methods enabled on the Web server"). I don't have this issue runing the original from VS2008 on the same machine.

Apart from the changes mentioned above the two are a straight code copy.

In VS2008 the project Web properties are: Use Visual Studio Development Server, auto-assign port, Virtual path = /

In VS2013 the project Web properties are: Server=IIS Express, Project URL=http://localhost:63064/ (and I have clicked on Create Virtual Directory)

I can see this must be some sort of security issue, but what extra needs to be done to get a VS2008 web app, upgraded to VS2013, to run within the VS2013 IDE?

Postscript: If I start the web app without debugging (ctrl-F5) I get "HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable."

What about the *Apply server settings to all users (store in project file)* checkbox? Also, some settings in the `web.config` might mess things up, see [here](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6033878/web-site-configuration) — Tasos K., Oct 19 '15 at 11:36
It is right above the dropdown where you choose the *Server* option. — Tasos K., Oct 19 '15 at 11:56
and what is the operation that your application fails to do? do you use any builtin authentication? — mikus, Oct 19 '15 at 12:36
It fails to start - I posted the error messages in my post above. it's not the application itself failing - IIS won't give me access to it. — haughtonomous, Oct 20 '15 at 08:35

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 20 '15 at 08:37

It turns out that the simple solution is configure the web app properties in VS2013 to use the local webserver (IIS) instead of IISExpress, and also to run VS2013 as administrator (but this is not necessary for VS2008). So obviously it is an IIS permissions thing but IIS is common and hasn't been changed - so what has changed in VS2013 to make this necessary? I don't really want to run VS2013 as administrator if I can avoid that.

Unable to run migrated web application in VS2013

1 Answers1