Azure webrole won't start, getting 500 Error, cannot read configuration file: applicationHost.config [closed]

Question

I'm just sharing this in case anyone else runs across the same problem. In updating my Azure references in response of the GuestOS forced updates on 12/09/2013 (that disabled our production cloud)

If you're diagnosing why the web-role didn't start for emulating your azure cloud locally, you can check the event viewer, and under Windows Logs -> Application, look for an IIS Express error... I was getting this:

The worker process for application pool '5665782e-ae77-4547-8cc2-3a7b3357602d' encountered an error 'Cannot read configuration file ' trying to read global module configuration data from file '\?\C:\Users\Mark\AppData\Local\dftmp\Resources\633952fb-10b8-4b96-b732-ad19eb835438\temp\temp\RoleTemp\applicationHost.config', line number '0'. Worker process startup aborted.

Turned out, that after updating the azure references using the NuGet package manager, there was duplicated entries for membership provider, role provider, and sessionstate. We aren't using defaults for those attributes, so that may be the cause of the problem...

But none the less, check your web.config for duplicate attributes. That is one potential cause of your web-role not stating.

Leduc

Welcome to stackoverflow. Note that this isn't just a forum. It's a Q&A site. You posted an A in a Q. As it stands, it will end up being closed. Perhaps you can edit your question to just be an actual question, and then post an answer (as an actual answer to the question)? This way the question will likely remain open, and then people can vote on your answer (or maybe even provide an alternate answer). – Fermata

I am having exactly the same issue. But I didn't see any duplication in my web.config file. So far, I haven't found a solution yet. – Preordain

Posted on the right place or not, you are my hero today! I spend 4h figuring out what was going wrong and the wrong references was the answer. I had both one duplicate as a few missing and other versions. Which never seemed to matter before, but since last update it stopped working completely. – Ahead

I removed the entire system.diagnostics node from web.config. it only included a listener node for azure diagnostics. That fixed the issue. This is a quick fix since I am assuming I will probably need it in the future... :/ I got the solution from this link:thedailyparker.com/… – Saltsman