ASP.Net cannot create/shadow copy

Open your project properties, open the Web tab and make sure the Enable Edit and Continue option is not checked.


Just restart Visual studio, that worked for me.


Wait somewhere between 10-30 seconds and hit refresh. For some reason this always works for me.


The following workarounds come from this now defunct connect issue:

  • add <hostingEnvironment shadowCopyBinAssemblies="false" /> to the <system.web> section of your web.config file.
  • Restart Cassini when you get the problem
  • If you get the error, stop the debugger, right click the solution and "clean solution". Hit F5 to restart debugger. This is really annoying as it has >50% fail rate for me and you would think that there should not be a manual option to CLEAN SOLUTION! This $1200 POS application should clean it for you automatically!
  • Here's another workaround that may be more appealing to some, courtesy of Gary Farr (http://blogs.claritycon.com/blogs/gary_farr/archive/2007/03/09/2888.aspx).
  • Add the following to your pre-build events:

    IF EXIST $(TargetPath).LOCKED (del $(TargetPath).LOCKED) ELSE (IF EXIST $(TargetPath) (move $(TargetPath) $(TargetPath).LOCKED))

  • A workaround that does the job for me is instead of using "Build" use "Build Solution"

  • After a successful build, I count to ten, then I refresh my webform.
  • I have found that by re-registering ASP.NET against IIS the problem "goes away" - I haven't had the problem since. You will need to run the following on the command line:
    C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_regiis.exe -i. This more than likely won't work for everyone - it's a complex problem.
  • restart VS.
  • When Cleaning the solution, a few warnings were issued about files that could not be deleted. These files had their read-only property set. After setting the property of these files to read/write, the problem was solved.
  • Restart IIS

EDIT: Items retrieved from an old version of the page (courtesy of archive.org).