Scott Hanselman

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Today's Errors: "Unexpected Error 0x8ffe2740 Occurred" Error Message When You Try to Start a Web Site and "Not Running ASP.NET Version 1.1" Error Message When You Try to Open an ASP.NET Web Application Project in Visual Studio .NET 2003

June 03, 2004 Comment on this post [6] Posted in ASP.NET | Web Services
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Good times, good times.  Twenty minutes before a demo to a bank, I get this:

"Not Running ASP.NET Version 1.1" Error Message When You Try to Open an ASP.NET Web Application Project in Visual Studio .NET 2003

Now, of course, I know darn well I'm only running .NET 1.1 on this box.  Hell if I know what's going on, but I've done the whole ASPNET_REGIIS thing before, so I run aspnet_regiis -ua, then aspnet_regiis -i (I could  have just done -r, probably).

Didn't work. I DO have some funky stuff in my Web.config customerrors section that has a defaultredirect.  Ah! http://support.microsoft.com/?id=825792 says:

"If the defaultRedirect attribute is set to an HTML file or to an ASP file, the request for the Get_aspx_ver.aspx file does not return the ASP.NET version information."

Bingo? No...now I get:

"Unexpected Error 0x8ffe2740 Occurred" Error Message When You Try to Start a Web Site

I see the 0x8ffe2740 and a Stop Sign in IIS's MMC. Turns out another process started up while IIS wasn't running and took over Port 80.  Running TCPView made it clear.

So, 13 minutes spent Googling and Troubleshooting.  Demo looks good and I've got 7 minutes to blog about it.

Would this be a good interview test problem for a potential employee?  Like, literally give them a laptop with this problem and say "fix it."  My CTO could have solved this problem as well in similar time, but I wonder (as I read Google Groups) if there aren't people who would waste days on this kind of problem.  Thoughts?

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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June 03, 2004 23:18
Without a doubt people could blow days on that problem, its a classic thrashing type problem. And most of the attempted fixes would make it worse, not better - the longer they thrashed, the further they would get from getting

A good hiring test is seeing how quickly people figure out that they're thrashing, rather than how fast they can get a solution. What external resources do they turn to? Do they give up? Do they say "I haven't found an easy solution, I'm prepared to start on the hard ones."

My catch phrase when hiring has long been "the difference between a senior and junior developer is the senior developer asks more questions."
Richard Campbell
June 04, 2004 1:21
Whew thanks you just solved the problem I've been having for week! Cool man thanks!


Just Kidding :)

-paolo
Paolo
June 04, 2004 1:50
While I haven't actually given anyone this kind of interview test, I have asked them questions like "if you run into a problem, how do you try to solve it?" At a minimum, I'm looking for 3 different sources (google, newsgroup post, colleagues, for example). Or I might ask them to tell me about how they solved a particularly thorny problem. I'm always amazed at the number of people who will say something like: "I look on MSDN." But that's their only answer - no other sources. Either they don't run into problems much (which probably means they aren't doing much), or they are lame.
Avonelle Lovhaug
July 16, 2005 3:04
Thanks for the help. I hadn't used ASP.Net for a few weeks (been working on a windows app), so it came a a surprise to get the "...specified Web server is not running ASP.NET version 1.1..." message, when I tried to fire up an old web service app. After starting up TCPView, it showed that Skype was the culprit in the way it grabs a few ports at a time and releases them in a repetitive cycle. I downloaded Skype a couple of weeks ago to IM my sister in Namibia, since her company banned them from using MSN Messenger, due to it having some security issue. I shut it down and problem solved! Shows you how the most innocuous actions can cause the most grief....

Thanks again.
Ian McCondochie
February 15, 2006 3:23
The heck with the Microsoft Knowledge base. I find much more useful information here.
Jason
March 16, 2006 12:01
Gosh Scott, I think I'm coming to your blog site more often than Googling the answers.. You so are a MVP!! Thanks again.. The TCPView will save me hundreds of hours I bet on figuring ut why some rogue process slammed into my IIS port 80 after uninstalling Apache from 7777.. go figure. You 'da man! (BTW, When's the new Flight Sim gonna ship from MS??)
Eric Golpe

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.