IIS express from command line

Question

I've installed the IIS Express 7.5 Beta 3 and tried it on multiple computers (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows XP) and on each one of them I get the following error when running

iisexpress /path:e:\onlineinvoices\

This is the error. It seems it can't find the applicationhost.config file. I've searched for this file myself too and found it in the AppServer folder of IISExpress installation folder.

Copied template config file 'C:\Program Files (x86)\IIS Express\AppServer\applicationhost.config' to 'C:\Users\marko\AppData\Local\Temp\iisexpress\applicationhost201115151422496.config' 
 Temp configuration file settings error.

The system cannot find the file specified.

The instructions here are pretty weird especially the ones that deal with configuration file. As a matter of fact it says that the applicationhost.config should exist in Users Documents folder but there's no trace of it there.

Answer 1

I had the same problem.

It started working after I ran IIS Express by double clicking on the C:\Program Files\IIS Express\iisexpress.exe.

After that it worked when I ran it from the command line.

Answer 2

Yes, launching iisexpress.exe one time should fix the problem. This is a bug that we will fix at the earliest opportunity. Using the /path option uses a temporary configuration file under the temp directory, which is setup to include the specified app. Without /path, iisexpress.exe uses the default applicationhost.config under documents and will create one if it doesn't exist.

Hope this helps.