IIS Express Immediately shutting-down running site after stopping web application

I recently faced a similar situation when suddenly my IIS Express stopped right after I stopped debugging. This happened after I turned on "Enable Edit and Continue". So if you disable this you will see that IIS Express stays running even after debugging is stopped.

Right click your project > click Properties > select the 'Web' tab on the left > uncheck the Enable Edit and Continue checkbox.


In VS2010 and VS2012, the edit and continue option is disabled by default when creating a new web application project. In VS2013 it is turned on by default.

You can find this option on the Web tab in the web project’s properties window.

edit and continue option vs2013

With “Enable Edit and Continue” on, the VS debugger starts your web application in IIS Express. When you stop debugging, IIS Express is closed too. With this behavior, you will see the IIS Express system tray shows up during debugging and gone after debugging. This behavior is the same as in VS2012 when the Enable Edit and Continue option is turned on.

If you don’t need "Edit and Continue" functionality during development and would like IIS Express to stay after a debugging session, you can simply turn the Enable Edit and Continue option off.

If you want to use "Edit and Continue" or you are developing an Asp.net 5 site (ASP.NET 5 projects don't have an Edit and Continue checkbox in project properties) you have to use the "Detech all" command to stop debugging.

The debugger will detach from the iis process without closing it.

Clearly "Edit and Continue" feature will not work until you start debugging again.

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Instead of hitting the (X) STOP button, you can use the Detach all menu item in the Debug menu. The major difference is that the stop button will terminate any process that is currently being debugged, while Detach All will disconnect the debugger from the processes, but will not terminate them.

The normal IIS worker process would also be terminated, but since it used to be running as a service, it will also automatically start up again and thus you could continue to use it without having to restart the process through |> Debug or |> Start without debugging.

Screenshot for Reference

Adding 'Edit and Continue' button to debugging toolbar.