Cannot access http://localhost on Win XP Pro

  • Thread starter Thread starter Lennart Andersson
  • Start date Start date
L

Lennart Andersson

I have a fundamental installation/setup problem on my
home computer that is stopping me from doing any ASP.NET
development or self-training with Visual Studio .NET.

The problem is that I cannot access http://localhost/ or
http://127.0.0.1/ in IE 6.0 but I can ping it from a
command prompt. It takes a long time before it returns
with the error message "Cannot find server" in the title
bar and "The page cannot be displayed" in the message
body. I have tried this when I am online and when I am
offline. No difference.

I am running Windows XP Professional on a Dell Dimension
8300. I have dial-up internet connection with Earthlink,
so I don't have an IP address assigned all the time. I
have installed IIS 5.1 but I cannot access the help
documentation at http://localhost/iisHelp/.

I did a search in the Microsoft Knowledge Base and found
an article (#290766) that addresses this problem but the
solution given is for Windows 2000 and I have done my
best to translate this to Windows XP. For example, I
installed the Microsoft Loopback Adapter but that doesn't
make any difference. I just don't understand how the
suggested solution actually works. How does creating a
VPN connection solve the problem? How does it use the
loopback adapter? BTW, I do have a network interface
card (Intel PRO/100 VE) that isn't used so I don't know
if it really was necessary to install the loopback
adapter.

I have run out of things to check and would very much
appreciate any help I can get at this point.
 
Lennart Andersson said:
I am running Windows XP Professional
I have installed IIS 5.1
Click to expand...

How does this have anything to do with Windows 2000 then?

Are your IISAdmin and World Wide Web Publishing services running?

Follow up in an XP or IIS group.

Ray at work
 
I don't have IIS running right now but maybe using http://<computername>
will work better where <computername> is whatever is the hostname
assigned to your computer. Run "ipconfig /all" to see your hostname, or
right-click on My Computer and look under the Network Identification tab
(this works for Windows 2000). I seem to recall that 127.0.0.1 and
localhost didn't work for me but using the hostname did.

If you have a firewall, you might have to configure an [application]
rule to let you talk to yourself.
 
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