iis express - Process with an ID #### is not running in visual studio professional 2013 update 3

Question

I am trying to run any program on visual studio 2013 update 3 and I get the following alert box :

Process with an ID #### is not running . // every time there is different ID number showing

and in the error windows I get this error msg:

The program '[3148] iisexpress.exe' has exited with code -1073741816 (0xc0000008) 'An invalid handle was specified'.

Sometimes it runs and in the browser i get the following message : The webpage is not available.

I have looked around and try almost everything and I stil cannot fix the problem.

Please help anyone

Answer 1

The following steps fix the problem for Visual Studio 2015 and Visual Studio 2017:

• Close VS.
• Navigate to the folder of the solution and delete the hidden .vs folder.
• Restart VS.
• Hit F5 and IIS Express should load as normal, allowing you to debug.

Note: Based on my experience and others in the comments, this problem seems to be caused by moving a project between workstations, environments, or versions of Visual Studio. There must be some environment specific information contained in the .vs folder.