IIS Express Web Server Port Is In Use

You can change the port of the website from the website properties under the web ribbon, specifying a different port other than 3268.

Also a link from the Stackoverflow discusses the same scenario

Why and how to fix? IIS Express "The specified port is in use"


I was having these issues with specific projects.

For me,

  • no website was running iin IIS Express
  • nothing was using the port as determined by running: netstat -ano at the command line.

The solution was to run

netsh http add iplisten ipaddress=::

from the command line.

Happy days, and credit to: James Bryant! https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/110767/specified-port-is-in-use.html


1, firs click properties.

1. click properties

  1. Click web tab and in servers section change the port number. (simply increment or decrement the last digit

After that click "Create Virtual Directory" button. Then debug and run. Click web tab and in servers section change the port number

I hope this will solve your problem


The link that Krishna provided inspired me to open IIS and discover that there was a local web site in IIS with the same port (it was the same web service). I deleted that, and now I can debug my application again.

I cannot explain why I couldn't see the port in use, why it started offering the web page when the project was loaded in Visual Studio, and why I couldn't see that IIS was running in the task manager. I am guessing that Visual Studio was actually running it somehow.

Thanks to all respondents for their help!