Unable to start debugging : strong name validation failed

When you go to debug anything that runs underneath IIS7 through Visual Studio 2008, if you're using Windows Vista, then you have probably run into the error message "Unable to start debugging : strong name validation failed." This is an extremely annoying message and obviously you need to debug your ASP.NET/WCF apps in VS2008. Thankfully I found a pretty easy fix on Dan Wahlin's blog.

If you've got sn.exe, which comes with all previous versions of the .NET Framework, then you can simply shell into your command prompt (I force my command prompt to run in administrator mode all the time) and issue this command:

sn -Vr %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\iisresolver.dll"

or if you're on a 64-bit computer:

sn -Vr "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\iisresolver.dll"

You'll get a quick message indicating that a verification entry has been added and then you should be good to go. Make sure that VS2008 Orcas is not running when you do this.

It might seem pretty trivial, but every single time I set up a new Orcas VM, I have to go through this routine so I figured I would post it here.

tags: vs2008  orcas  iis7  vista  strongname  debug  

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