Hi,

While I was working on my Windows Vista with Visual Studio 2005 and trying to encrypt and decrypt configuration file web.config sections in order to make sensitive data secure, I got the following error message: Failed to access IIS metabase.

Later when I run the Visual Studio 2005 IDE with the administrative rights, I was able to run my application successfully. So open the VS IDE by Run as Administrator option.

I explained how I encrypted and decrypted connectionStrings configuration section at article named "Encrypting sensitive information stored in the web.config file"

Server Error in '/WebSite1' Application.

Failed to access IIS metabase.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.Web.Hosting.HostingEnvironmentException: Failed to access IIS metabase.

The process account used to run ASP.NET must have read access to the IIS metabase (e.g. IIS://servername/W3SVC). For information on modifying metabase permissions, please see http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=267904.

Source Error:

Line 15:         Dim path = "/WebSite1"
Line 16: 
Line 17:         Dim config As Configuration = System.Web.Configuration.WebConfigurationManager.OpenWebConfiguration(path)
Line 18:         Dim appSettings As ConfigurationSection = config.GetSection("connectionStrings")
Line 19: