VS 2012 IIS Express 8 - Cannot Start IIS Express Web Server

Question

I try to start an MVC 4 project in IIS Express 8 (because this is obviously what comes with VS 2012), and every time I try to start it from VS, I get the following error.

Cannot start the IIS Express web server.

14:53:48: Error: cannot initialize OLE

14:53:48: Error: cannot initialize OLE

Running IIS Express through WebMatrix works fine. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, but nothing works. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I have not seen the OLE errors you have, but everything else seems to be ...

checking event submission, I saw preloading IIS.NET 4.0.30306. All configuration files pointed to 4.0.30319.

But ... under my Windows / Microsoft.NET / Framework / (and Framework64) I had a partial installation of v4.0.30306.

Removing both of these .30306 folders and rebooting fixed the issue of starting IIS for me.

Answer 2

I'm not sure if this will help, but it worked for me. After uninstalling IIS, make sure that you delete the IISExpress folder (in Windows 7, it is located in the My Documents \ IISExpress folder). Here are the IIS configuration files, and if you do not delete them after the removal, the newly installed IIS will end using the old configuration files.