IIS Express GUI

Looking for a admin GUI so I can start/stop IISExpress websites I quickly found iisexpressgui on codeplex/ which is by Matteo Tontini and iis express manager. They both do pretty much the same thing. They also both only pick up only the first binding for a site, so if you've got two -- for instance one for http and one for https -- then you might need to edit your %Documents%\IISExpress\config\applicationhost.config to choose the one you want to use.

Visual Studio 2013 Command Prompt Here for Windows Explorer Context Menu

To get a Visual Studio 2013 Command Prompt Here as a Context Menu (i.e., Right Click Menu) item in Windows Explorer, save this snippet to a .reg file and double click to import it into your registry:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Line VS2013]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Line VS2013\command]
@="cmd.exe /k echo on & pushd \"%1\" & \"C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\\Common7\\Tools\\VsDevCmd.bat\"" 

If you prefer to manually create the key path in RegEdit and add the command as the default value, drop the outermost quotes and the backslash escaping:

cmd.exe /k echo on & pushd "%1" & "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\Tools\VsDevCmd.bat"

Visual Studio Template ASP.NET Simple Membership database could not be initialized. For more information, please see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=256588

If you use the VS template to create a new 'internet' web application, then the template includes code for Asp.Net simple membership. But the template is written for SqlExpress. If you instead have a full SQL Server install on your machine it won't work.

The first exception you might see when debugging in visual studio is,

Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.

or if you aren't debugging you might see

The system cannot find the file specified

neither of which help at all.

so first, change the connection string in web.config to use your local SQL Server:

<add name="DefaultConnection" connectionString="Data Source=(LocalDb)\v11.0;Initial Catalog=aspnet-MvcApplication1-20140225162244;Integrated Security=SSPI;AttachDBFilename=|DataDirectory|\aspnet-MvcApplication1-20140225162244.mdf" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

changing the connectionString's Data Source property to Data Source=.;

Now you might get the same or a different exception message:

The ASP.NET Simple Membership database could not be initialized. For more information, please see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=256588

but the linked page doesn't tell you how to fix it.

The inner exception is more helpful:

Directory lookup for the file "c:\...etc...\MvcApplication1\App_Data\aspnet-MvcApplication1-20140225162244.mdf" failed with the operating system error 5(Access is denied.).
CREATE DATABASE failed. Some file names listed could not be created. Check related errors.

Which tells you that the login account under which SQL Server is running doesn't have write permissions to the directory in which you write you code. It does have write permissions in the SQL Server data directory, for instance C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL\DATA so you'd think that by looking at that directory to see what user it runs under you'd be able to give it permissions.

Almost. The Explorer GUI Security tab showed me a usergroup called 'MSSQLSERVER' but if you try to give permissions to that group you'll find it doesn't exist. More helpful is the command line:

cacls "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL"

which, if you look carefully at the output,

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL11.MSSQLSERVER\MSSQL 
    CREATOR OWNER:(OI)(CI)(IO)F
    NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:(OI)(CI)F
    BUILTIN\Administrators:(OI)(CI)F
    BUILTIN\Users:(OI)(CI)R
    NT SERVICE\MSSQLSERVER:(OI)(CI)R

shows you that you the actual name is NT SERVICE\MSSQLSERVER

So I gave modify permissions on my App_Data directory to NT SERVICE\MSSQLSERVER (I carefully copy-pasted the full name) and it worked.

Asp.Net MVC Project Guids

The famously unhelpful Visual Studio error message 'The project type is not supported by this installation' usually means that there is something you don't have installed. But it doesn't tell you what.

You can work out what you're missing if you know the Guids to look for in the project file. Look for a line near the top of the file something like this:

<ProjectTypeGuids>{E53F8FEA-EAE0-44A6-8774-FFD645390401};{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}</ProjectTypeGuids>

After which you can decode the Guid using either the table here:

Guid Tools Needed to Open Project Build references
{E53F8FEA-EAE0-44A6-8774-FFD645390401} Asp.Net MVC 3 System.Web.Mvc 3.0.0.0
{E3E379DF-F4C6-4180-9B81-6769533ABE47} Asp.Net MVC 4 System.Web.Mvc 4.0.0.0
{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21} Web Designer

Or the more extensive list at http://www.mztools.com/articles/2008/mz2008017.aspx. If you're stuck try http://google.com/search?q=visual+studio+project+type+guid+list