Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Visual Studio 2003 disappears when opening a Web Project

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Visual Studio 2003 disappears when opening a Web Project

Posted in ASP.NET | Bugs.

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.

Posted at 2006-03-28 10:28 PM by Scott
Comments [7]
Permalink

Tuesday, March 28, 2006 11:41:50 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

So... how did VS get installed without FP? Did they uninstall FP after installing VS?

Jonmichael

Wednesday, March 29, 2006 6:27:36 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Thanks for ruining my Wednesday morning by reminding me about FPX.

Ralph Whitbeck

Wednesday, March 29, 2006 9:46:01 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

Hmmmm, never had the IDE disappear on me w/o some kind of error dialog. But I have had it refuse to minimize on me. Really weird.

Scott

Wednesday, March 29, 2006 11:22:09 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I guess you must be referring to having VS.NET 2003 installed for remote dev and debugging, because when I install it for local development, I never install FrontPage and it works just fine. Interesting...

Scott Cadillac

Tuesday, April 04, 2006 9:50:35 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I've had this happen.....

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....

Andrew Needleman

Wednesday, May 17, 2006 5:50:36 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I still have this problem regularly, but I have the front page extensions installed as required. Causes a lot of wasted time.

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.