Visual Studio "Unable to start debugging on the web server. The web server did not respond in a timely manner."

The solution that worked for me:

1. Open Command Prompt (Run as Administrator)

2. Write iisreset /restart

3. Now, go back to your VS and debug. It will debug your solution.

It worked for Visual Studio 2013 and 2015 too in my case.

I find that this happens if I'm debugging with Firefox as my browser. When I exit Firefox the VS2005/8 debug session doesn't terminate. I have not found a solution for this (yet).

If this is what's happening with you then a quicker solution than running iisreset is to hit Shift-F5 when in Visual Studio and this will terminate the current debug session. You can then hit F5 and this will start a new debug session.

After trying all of the proposed solutions here and in other places (at least 10 different approaches), the only option that worked for me was:

• delete website and application pool on IIS
• re-create website and application pool on IIS (in my case, everything exactly the same config as before)

PS: I am using VS 2013 and IIS 7.5 (Win7).

I hope this saves someone else a few hours.