Couldn't open metabase error when profiling ASP .NET hosted in IIS

Category: Troubleshooting & error messages
Date: 17 Jun 2009
Product: ANTS Memory Profiler
When profiling an ASP .NET web application hosted in IIS, an exception may occur at the start of profiling. Clicking "Show Details" will reveal the following information, as well as some stack traces:

Could not start IIS.
Couldn't open metabase - Please ensure that IIS is installed

This error can happen when you are logged into the computer with an account that has reduced privileges. To correct this, log out of the computer and log back in using an Administrator account, or one that has administrative privileges on the machine. Open a command prompt, and change the working directory to the installation directory of the version of Microsoft .NET Framework that the ASP .NET application uses as its' runtime. For instance, if the web application that you want to profile uses ASP .NET 2.0:

cd \
cd %systemroot%\microsoft.net\framework\v2.0.50727

Now run the ASPNET_REGIIS utility, which will grant permissions to the IIS metabase and ASP .NET temporary files locations. To allow a domain user called MyDomain\MyUser, this would be the correct command:

aspnet_regiis -ga MyDomain\MyUser

After logging the administrator account off and logging your low-privilege user back on, the account should now have access to IIS and ASP .NET appropriate for profiling the web application hosted in IIS.

Document ID: KB200810000311 Keywords: ANTS, Profiler,IIS,Couldn't,open,metabase,start

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