Problem with Webdev.webserver.exe when working with web services with non-fixed ports

Yesterday, a team mate of mine sent an email regarding a problem with his Visual Studio 2005. ASP.NET web server wasn’t allowing him to debug any Web services. Following is the complete description of his problem:

Summary

In short, the ASP.NET 2.0 development web server (webdev.webserver.exe) on my machine broke after I installed and uninstalled NDoc some days ago. IIS still works fine. I’ve tried re-registering ASP.NET 2.0 (aspnet_regiis –r from the 2.0 directory) to no avail. Other than re-installing VS 2005, could you recommend a quick fix?

Problem Description

I am on XP. I had VS 2005 with v2.0 of the framework. Then I installed NDoc recently and that supports only v1.1, so it installed v1.1 on top of v2.0. That is fine because both versions can co-exist but what it did was screw up some settings with:
a) The web server that comes with ASP.NET, the one you run your web services on in debug mode.
b) SQL Server’s active CLR settings (but this isn’t bothering me as much)
c) IIS settings (but I fixed this by re-registering IIS with 2.0)
What’s bothering me to the hilt now is the broken ASP.NET web server won’t allow me to debug my Web services or even have another project in the same solution create a web reference to it.
I can’t generate proxies in Visual Studio because of this, nor can I set a web reference to a web service in the same solution (as it involves generating a proxy).
Note that I can call wsdl.exe though. My web services compile, and if I generate a proxy myself through wsdl.exe, deploy my WS locally on IIS, and change the url in the proxy’s constructor to my locally deployed WS, and add the proxy to my client project, it all works fine.

But I don’t want to deploy my service yet. I just want all projects in the same solution referencing the ws like well-behaved little kids.
When I do try to create a web reference to the WS project in my solution, I keep getting this error:
Server Error in ‘/’ Application.
——————————————————————————–
Parser Error
Description: An error occurred during the parsing of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific parse error details and modify your source file appropriately.
Parser Error Message: Could not create type ‘DaWS.PhoneDirectory’.
Source Error:
Line 1:  <%@ WebService Language="C#" CodeBehind="PhoneDirectory.asmx.cs"
Line 2:  Class="DaWS.PhoneDirectory" %>
Source File: /PhoneDirectory.asmx    Line: 2
——————————————————————————–
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.3082; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.3082
It’s been nagging me for days now and I’ve been managing with deploying in IIS.
Other than re-install Visual Studio, does anyone have a better solution?
Here’s what the Event Log says:
Event Type:    Warning
Event Source:    ASP.NET 2.0.50727.0
Event Category:    Web Event
Event ID:    1310
Date:        06/05/2009
Time:        12:04:33 AM
User:        N/A
Computer:    ABCD
Description:
Event code: 3006
Event message: A parser error has occurred.
Event time: 06/05/2009 12:04:33 AM
Event time (UTC): 05/05/2009 6:34:33 PM
Event ID: c41a610193fa4c2e810dad096709b0b0
Event sequence: 4
Event occurrence: 1
Event detail code: 0
Application information:
    Application domain: a54e0deb-1-128860220726250000
    Trust level: Full
    Application Virtual Path: /
    Application Path: C:\Me\rnd\DotNet\DoIndexersGetSerialized\DaWS\
    Machine name: ABCD
Process information:
    Process ID: 660
    Process name: webdev.webserver.exe
    Account name: Domain\Me

Some one finally caught the issue, following are his observations and solution:

Just wondering if you are using a fixed port or not for the web service that you try to reference. Because Web Dev by default always host the app on different port and if that the case you will not be able to get it working ever.

If you are not using the fixed port I would suggest you to use the “External Tool” options present in the VS’s Tool menu and create a fixed web dev location that is associated with you web service and you should be able get it working.

I may be telling you the thing that you might have tried but just incase if you haven’t please give it a try.

Please have a look at this URL and probably give you the solution you are looking for.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2005/11/21/431138.aspx

This did the trick. The problem was solved. So I thought to write it here as someone else may face the same issue. 🙂