Do you get the error "Role instances did not start within the time allowed." when you are working in Visual Studio and attempting to debug a Windows Azure application?  I just rebuilt my laptop and bang, I was getting the error.  Its not a very helpful error at all.  How do you find out the real error?  I've been googling for this off and on all afternoon.  Bang, here's the solution:  "Start things in Visual Studio spinning up, and in the 30 seconds before everything came crashing down, try to hit http://127.0.0.1:81 (the default location for Azure web roles)." By pointing my browser at the url, I got the real error, which happened to be a couple of missing assemblies, and I was off and running again.