Issues with ASP.net Development server and Windows Vista

I am just beginning to learn asp.net and ended up troubleshooting localhost issues very soon.i just built a basic asp.net webpage and try to run it (ctrl+f5). localhost was not resolved and it resulted in “page not found error” on both internet explorer and firefox.

As usual looked up google to find the solution and it was not as easy as i thought.after searching for more than half  hour i came across numerous solutions.tried lot of them none of them worked.

I am trying to run asp.net development server on fully updated vista sp1 machine running eset nod32 antivirus.here is a quick overview of all the methods i tried.

• I read in some blog that  eset nod32 antivirus is causing the problem ,i disabled the antivirus(the blog asked me to disable only protocol filtering) but unfortunately it didnt solve the problem . you can try that method here or look down for an easier way

• Went through each and every step to solve the problem “the msdn way”.it did not solve the problem but situation improved a little.after following the steps given in msdn i was able to run the project by replacing “localhost” by the actual IP address 127.0.0.1 . I also set this address in the project properties under custom server as                    http://127.0.0.1:portnumber/myprojectname/.this releived me of changing the address  every time i tested. i was somehow not convinced with the solution.there had to be better way.

• After googling for some more time ,i finally found the easiest way. open the notepad in administer mode. open the file system32/drivers/etc/host file and   add a colon where you find  ::1 localhost. that is after modification the line should look this way

“:::1        localhost “instead of  “::     localhost”.save the changes and exit.

hope you found the solution. if you got any better one please add it below.