IIS - Other - I need Information about IIS

I woke up then realized "I want to learn ASP.NET" so I googled for ASP .NET tutorial and ended up at w3schools website. It says prerequisites are Windows Operating System, .net frame work, IIS, and a text editor.

So I inserted my windows XP cd to install the IIS component, checked if it is working and yes it is. I have .net installed already because i've been programming with C# for quite some time (.net 3.5).. Notepad is my text editor and started reading w3school's ASP.net tutorial.. It says that the extension for ASP.net Pages is ".aspx" So i changed my index.htm to index.aspx then it's not working. What happens is it downloads index.aspx. So i was wondering maybe my IIS isn't configured properly so I did a research and found this:

To install and enable ASP.NET:

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Click Add or Remove Programs.
3. Click Add/Remove Windows components.
4. Double-click Application Server, and then click Details.
5. Click to select the ASP.NET check box, and then click OK.
6. Click Next.
7. Click Finish.

APPLIES TO

* Microsoft Internet Information Services 6.0
* Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition (32-bit x86)
* Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (32-bit x86)
* Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Web Edition

Ok look at number 4. I cannot find "application server". Then I thought maybe my version of IIS is lower than 6.0 because it says that windows XP by default comes with IIS 5.x... And yes I'm using windows XP and not a windows server operating system. I found out that II6 is only available for Windows Server 2003. So as of now I have come to conclusion that..... ASP.NET only runs on a windows Server... now can anyone tell me how to correctly deploy ASP.NET so that I could start my tutorial?..