Attach Debugger to IIS instance
C#asp.netVisual Studio-2005DebuggingC# Problem Overview
I have IIS 5.1 on a XP machine, and visual studio 2005. How do I go about attaching my debugger to IIS instance.
BTW: I'm not seeing the IIS process within the running processes or probably I don't know what to look for .
C# Solutions
Solution 1 - C#
In Visual Studio:
- Click "Debug" from the menu bar
- Click "Attach to Process"
- Check the "Show processes from all users" checkbox in the bottom left corner
- Select aspnet_wp.exe, w3p.exe, or w3wp.exe from the process list
- Click "Attach"
Solution 2 - C#
Just to clarify Jimmie R. Houts answer…
If you want to debug the web application VS and IIS you can do the following:
-
Host the site inside IIS (virtual directory etc).
-
Then in VS2005 do this:
- Right Click on Web Project → Properties → Start options → Use Custom Server → Base URL → Enter Site Address as Hosted in IIS.
- Hit F5 and you will be able to Debug your code
Same works for VS 2008 also.
Solution 3 - C#
I'm running Windows 7 with IIS Version 7.5 and I also needed to tick the "Show processes from all users" and "Show processes in all sessions" boxes - at the bottom of the "Attach to Process" dialog.
Also I had put my app in a specific App Pool which means you can then see it labeled against the w3wp.exe.
Solution 4 - C#
The IIS process is aspnet_wp.exe.
In fact, attaching to the aspnet_wp.exe process is what VS does when you have your project set to use IIS for debugging.
Solution 5 - C#
The possible names of the ASP.NET process:
- w3wp.exe is IIS 6.0 and later.
- aspnet_wp.exe is earlier versions of IIS.
- iisexpress.exe is IISExpress.
- dotnet.exe is ASP.NET Core.
- inetinfo.exe is older ASP applications running in-process.
Solution 6 - C#
You'll also need to open Internet Information Service From Control Panel > Administrative Tools. Right click the web site in question, click the home directory tab, and select the configuration button. This will open a new form with three tabs - click the debugging one and select the two options in the debugging flag section. This is also necessary to debug.
Solution 7 - C#
Using an Attach to IIS plugin (VS2015, VS2017) plugin saves a few clicks - especially when dealing with an ecosystem of IIS hosted sites (one frontend with multiple backend services say)
Solution 8 - C#
If you see the process [e.g. IIS Worker Process (w3wp.exe)] running is Task Manager, but not in the list of processes in debug > attach to process
, you might need to run Visual Studio as administrator.