Visual Studio 2003 disappears when opening a Web Project
My buddy Ramkumar at work today had a weird problem. When he opened a Web Project in Visual Studio 2003, the IDE *disappeared*. Not crashed, not Dr. Watsoned, but poof. Aren't those the best bugs?
Anyway, we poked around for a bit and did these things that one does when debugging VS.NET 2003 Web Project problems.
- Checked that IIS was running and on Port 80. Check. Not the problem.
- Checked that ASP.NET was installed and installed it again just in case with ASPNET_REGIIS.EXE -i. Check. Not the problem.
- Checked with Spybot that nothing nasty was installed and watching the network. Check. Not the problem.
- Checked that Front Page Extensions were installed by right clicking a VDir within IIS's MMC-based Admin.
- Yikes, not there. How could VS.NET have installed, FP is a prerequisite.
- Went into Add/Remove Programs, then Windows Setup and installed Front Page Extensions.
- Then configured FP by right-clicking the Web and selecting "Configure Front Page Extensions"
Then it all worked and we were left with that sickening feeling that we had a small spot on our floor and ended up laying down completely new carpet.
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The only way to "fix" it is to use "Alt-Tab" to get to that VS.NET instance.
A bit old fashioned, but it works....
Seems to be reasonably randomly. I can shake it by killing aspnet_wp.exe and trying again - seems to help, but not guaranteed. Only on web projects too.
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