So, for the past couple of weeks, while working on a project that involves integration with Community Server 2007 I've run into the annoying and ambiguous message "Unable to start debugging on the web server".



Now, I've set up IIS sites before and I know to check the usual suspects; app pool, Windows authentication, etc.  But with the tight deadline of this project, I just haven't had the time to research this one.  Googling this usually just brings up forums where "Unable to start debugging on the web server" is brought up that are run on Community Server.  Yeah, helpful.

So, today I need (stress the word NEED) to debug this application because the blog web service is not returning consistent data.  That's a whole other WTF, but for now we'll stick with the issue at hand; getting the damn thing to debug.

With that, I have to figure this out.  Within a few minutes I find myself in this forum which is telling me that it's my IIS is corrupt and that I have to uninstall everything .NET then reinstall it all.  Bullshit I say!  BULLSHIT!  So I continue to scroll down when I see a reply from a "David B" which simply says to change the debug attribute in the web.config to true.  YES!  Community Server distributes the SDK with this option set to false.  Damn, I need to remember this!

So, for those of you in the same boat, DO NOT reinstall IIS and everything .NET, just change the web.config to the following:


Works like a charm.