Visual Studio 2008 / 2005 Development Server not working (Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage)
Recently, a patch on Windows Forefront and Windows Defender Client Security signature on March 9, 2009 PST modified the host file of machines to prevent malicious redirection of website. However, by doing so, it also removed the entry for localhost which caused site launched by the Web Dev Server to display the “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage error”.
To fix this, simply navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and
If you see this: (There are some problems with the picture serving service on this blog: check out my new blog @ : Cloudfex )
Simple add another “:” to ::1 localhost
so it will be :::1 localhost
This will fix your problem. However, if you receive any permission error on Vista when trying to access this file. What you have to do is to run “notepad” using administrator mode and then navigate to the file to modify it.

(Cross Posted from Cloudfex)