Dubugging Classic ASP in Visual Studio 2005

Introduction

I couldn't find a lot of documentation on how to debug the classic ASP pages in VS 2005 running on Windows XP and IIS 5.0. So I tried a few stuff and finally figured it out. I have listed those steps in this article. It is very easy and takes only 5 minutes. I have not tried it with the VS 2005 Website model and used the Web Application Project instead. If you do not have the Web Application Project add-in installed, you can download it from here.

Steps

1. Go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management. Add IWAM_ComputerName account to the Debugger Users group.
2. Create a Web Application Project in VS 2005 and add the .asp files.
3. Create a virtual directory in IIS for the Web Application Project that you created.
4. On the Properties tab of the virtual directory in IIS, do the following:
1. Click the Configuration button.
2. On the Mappings tab, select .asp and click Edit.
3. Add the DEBUG verb and click OK.
4. Go to the Debugging tab.
5. Enable ASP debugging and client-side debugging.
5. Load the web application project and set the breakpoint in ASP.
6. In VS 2005, go to Debug > Attach to Process.
7. Select the DLLHost process that runs under the IWAM_ComputerName account.
8. Load the .asp file in the browser and the break point will bind now.

Happy coding.