I have a project that runs on https://localhost:44306 . Yesterday by my manager's requirement I published the project for deployment to a test machine for the customers (which also is using IIS Express and is running IIS Express from the command. However, the IIS Express on that machine for some unknown reason is not able to be configured to use SSL. Therefore before publishing I changed the project properties so as to run usinghttp://localhost:51716 , and changed SSL Enabled to false. (I've since discovered that this was not necessary as the web app would run under whatever bindings were entered in applicationHost.config for that web app no matter what it read when it was published.)
However, once the deployment was complete I switched the project back to SSL Enable = true and to run usignhttps://localhost:44306 . I had to go into the applicationHost.config to put the SSL binding back into the Web site description. However now whenever I open the project in VS 2012 I get an error message saying:
An error occured when applying the IIS Express settings to server URL 'https://localhost:44306' for project 'projectName'. You may have to manually edit the applicationHost.config file and make changes for your site to run correctly.
Since I've already done that then I am not sure what possible error IIS Express could be experiencing. There is nothing in the IIS Express log files to indicate that an error even occurred. Nor is there anything in the Event Viewer logs to show ANY error. I cannot find any Visual Studio 2012 error logs.
While one may be attempted to recommend that this thread be posted on the IIS.Net forums, I've found over the past year that the contributors to that forum are unconversant with IIS Express and do not bother answer queries about it.
So to quote Star Wars; "Help me Obi-wan Kenobi; you're my only hope."