configuring IIS on winXP

Hola!

I'm a newbie, and I have a big problem. I cant get IIS to work on my winXP. I have successfully got PWS to work on Win98SE and IIS on Win2k. But I have no idea why it doesnt work on WinXP.

I've been thru numerous tutorials but they arent in detail. I guess my problem might be due to the lack of knowledge on how to create and setup user accounts.

I have installed IIS on my desktop.

Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Internet Information Services and I see PGDERMS05 (this computer) on IIS 5.1 (local)

It has two child nodes,
1/ Web Sites
2/ default SMTP virtual server

Under Web Sites, there's a Default Web Site showing the contents of my default directory (currently c:\inetpub\wwwroot)

If I right click on the directory and hit properties, go to directory security and click Edit, I see
1/ Anonymous access ticked.
Username : PGDERMS05\IUSR_PGDERMS05
Password : (IIS controlled)
2/ Basic Authentication unticked
3/ Integrated Windows Authentication ticked.

I was told that's all I need to run asp files on my Internet Explorer. Wrong.

Whenever I type http://localhost it says:
No web site is configured at this address.

I heard that I need to mess with user settings to allow anonymous access to my site. I have no idea where the user settings are located and what to do to enable this access. Is it directory access, file access or internet access I also have no clue as where to get this information.

If you can show me a step by step, please do help me. I'm in dire need of help, I've searched almost everywhere, and whenever I see a question similar to mine, all the replies seem to be

"Have you checked if anonymous users have access to your site?"

This question-answer doesnt help me because I dont know how to check that, and even if I did, I dont know how to let these users access the site.

Thanks in advance.

No website configured means nothing is responding to port 80, the standard http port.

If you are running XP Home forget this, IIS isn't supported on XP Home. I assume you're on XP Pro since you have an IIS manager.

IIS should serve up pages immediately after installation, there are no settings you must change before it works. There are changes you may wish to make but none you have to make to get a page into your browser.

Check in Administrative Tools - Services that the WWW service is running.

Make sure the Default Website doesn't say "(stopped)"

Put a specific html page in place, like index.html or test.htm and try to open http://localhost/test.htm

If you weren't the Administrator user when you installed IIS, uninstall it, log on as Administrator and reinstall IIS.

If you are running firewall software make sure you're not blocking port 80.

If you are running script blocking technology like Norton try disabling it for testing purposes.

Check the event logs for any errors.

Thanks for trying.

I am running winXP Pro

IIS hadnt worked for me since I completed the installation. The changes I had tried to make was to get it to run, that's all.

I checked in Admin Tools->Services->Default Website and it says "Running"

I put a specific page and it still gives me this error:
"Server Application Error
The server has encountered an error while loading an application during the processing of your request. Please refer to the event log for more detail information. Please contact the server administrator for assistance."

I am not running a firewall. Is there a built in firewall for winXP? I dont remember installing any sort of firewall, but the tech that installed winXP on this PC when I got it could (possibly) have installed a firewall. I dont know how to find out.

Same thing with script blocking technology. I havent done anything to install any script blocking technology. If winXP has something built in, then I will have to learn how to disable it.

In the event logs, this is an example of what I got:
09:57:19 127.0.0.1 GET /test.asp 500

I think that means it requested test.asp from my local IP but returns with error 500. If I'm wrong, please correct me.

Thanks

Look in the Windows event log. Open Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Event viewer & see what it says in the system & application logs that may be relevant.

There is a XP firewall that is not enabled by default.

Script blocking often comes with Norton Antivirus

Thanks again.

THe only items I found relevent in the event log would be ones under application:

Type:Warning (Date) (Time) Source:Frontpage 4.0 Category:None Event:1000


If I double-click on it, it will say Frontpage Extensions cannot find the file specified. That would be ridiculous, as because if I just simply used IIS Admin->Default Web Browser and simply right click on any html or asp file and then selected "browse" it will still give me an error 500.

I looked through NAV Corporate edition, and I couldnt find "enable/disable script blocking" anywhere. Could you guide me to see whether it is enabled or disabled?

Okay this might help a bit.

Under System

Type:Warning Date 9/25/03 Time 2:53:50PM Source:W3SVC Category: None Event:36 User:N/A Computer:PGDERMS05

And if I open it,
DescriptionL
The server failed to load application "/LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT'. The error was 'General access denied error'.

I think IIS is running but there is a problem with User Permissions or something.

I played around with some permissions or security and now I get
"You are not authorized to view this page"

Before this I did something else and I was able to open html files and gif files from Internet Explorer but it wont run ASP files.

I dont know how to get it back to display gif files, though. All I know was that I played around with directory permissions or something.

Does this give you a clue as to what I should do next?

Okay I just did this:

IIS Admin->IIS Services->PCname->Web Sites->
>Right Click on Default Web Site
>Select All Tasks
>Select Permissions Wizard
>Next
>Inherit All Security Settings

It will show:
Administrators have full access to files
Everyone can read files
Everyone can write files
Everyone can execute files

>Replace all directory and file permissions (recommended)
>Next
>Next
>Finish

and now I can view gif files and html files. But still no ASP.

If I try running an ASP file, it will say:
Server Application Error
The server has encountered an error while loading an application during the processing of your request. Please refer to the event log for more detail information. Please contact the server administrator for assistance

In Event Log->System it says:
The server failed to load application "/LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT'. The error was 'General access denied error'.
(as was stated above)

Any ideas?

IIS usually operates as the IUSR_computername user, try adding that user account to the web root.

It sounds to me like your IIS was installed when you were not logged in as an administrator user.

Hmm, I'm logged in as a user that is an administrator, but my user name isnt local. Its part of the network domain. Do you mean I have to be logged in locally as administrator?

Yes, you need to install IIS from a user account with local administrator privileges. I just add my domain user account to the local administrator group.

You don't need to be logged on locally at all after you get IIS installed.

Yes that's what I have done initially. I already added my domain user name into the local administrator's group. I thought you meant I need to be logged in as the user "Administrator" before installing IIS.

That does not solve the problem though..

I found this page and it was quite helpful:
http://www.iisfaq.com/Default.aspx?View=A463

THe server was able to serve asp files if I set APPLICATION PROTECTION to LOW. But once I set it back to medium, it gave me errors again.

From the page, it says that there must be something wrong with my IWAM account. Okay I have no idea what that is and if I need to create that account. I dont see that account anywhere.

So where do I need to put this IWAM account?

I am running out of ideas. On my XP Pro the IUSR_computername and IWAM_computername accounts were created automatically in the local XP computer users (not the domain users).

I would be tempted to uninstall, reboot & reinstall IIS. To state the obvious, something appears to have gone terribly wrong with your current installation

One other thing, I always use NTFS. Maybe if you're using FAT32 disks there are other permission considerations since FAT doesn't support the acl's and user-level security of NTFS.

Thanks for trying Doug =)

I have reinstalled IIS and its still the same. I have no idea what's wrong with this. Nobody I asked could help me.

Maybe if you post the steps you are following to install IIS something will jump out?

You need XP Pro preferably using NTFS filesystem. Log on as the local computer Administrator. Uninstall any previous IIS installations.

Control Panel - Add Remove Programs - Add Windows Components and find the IIS section. Select the options you want, the default settings work well for me.

That should be it. You could try logging on as the local administrator after installation and see if you can access localhost.

Maybe you have some GPO or other policy setting preventing IIS on workstations?