Visual Studio 2013. You do not have sufficient privilege to access IIS web sites on your machine

I just installed VS2013 and turned on IIS 7 on my Windows 7 Ultimate x64 machine. When trying to open a solution I get:

Creation of the virtual directory localhost:xxxxx failed with the error: Unable to access the IIS metabase. You do not have sufficient privilege to access IIS web sites on your machine.

I tried running Visual Studio 2013 as Administrator (right click, run as administrator), still the same error. I also did aspnet_regiis -i and it didn't help either.

Solution 1:

Go to C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv. Click config folder. You will get a popup - "You don't have access to this folder - Click continue to permanently get access to this folder". Perform same for Export folder which is inside config folder. You should be able to open the solution and the web application project will be deployed on IIS.

Solution 2:

The root cause of this error for me was that IIS was installing the config folder on a network shared drive at my workplace. I had to change this to use a local drive and it fixed it.

IIS creates an IISExpress folder in your %USER_HOME%/Documents folder (which for me was a shared drive)

For me this issue was solved by uninstalling IIS, and clearing everything IIS related in the registry. I then had to change my Documents drive in Registry (KHCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders) from a shared drive to a local drive (C:\Users[profile]\Documents).

Then reinstall IIS. It should create an IISExpress in the new Documents folder.

Solution 3:

In Windows 8, you have to right-click devenv.exe and select "Troubleshoot compatibility".

select "Troubleshoot Program"
check "The program requires additional permissions"
click "Next", click "Test the program..."
wait for the program to launch
click "Next"
select "Yes, save these settings for this program"
click "Close"

Solution 4:

I had tried each of the steps recommended and didn't work. So, my last resource was to review the registry to find out if my user was pointing to a temp or cache folder. Some posts were suggesting to check on HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE; but those were. So, I finally found it by going into the HKEY_CURRENT_USER as recommended by boilers222:
Opened registry (CTRL-R, regedit, OK) Navigated to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\ Found the Personal key was pointing to "\OurServer\RedirectedFolders\MyName\MyDocuments" Selected the Personal key, right clicked on it, and selected Modify
Entered a location pointing to my user's documents file: "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\" Clicked OK and closed the registry editor When I opened Visual Studio and opened my solution, it loaded without the "unable to access the IIS metabase" error.