Issues with CDONTS on Windows Server 2003

Hi All,

I have a client with a Windows Server 2000 box at their current host. The host is upgrading the box to Windows Server 2003. There are about 50 sites on this server. More than half of these are classic ASP and use CDONTS to send emails.

Windows Server 2003 does not come packaged with CDONTS, and while it would be *best* to go through and re-code everything with CDOSYS to handle outgoing email, it is not in my client's budget.

I proposed a solution whereby we could install the CDONTS .dll on the Windows Server 2003 implementation. This would significantly reduce cost for now and would serve as a proper "bandage" to allow the legacy code to continue living.

The hosting company shot back to my client (who is fairly non-technical) this:



Is this a bunch of crap? I'm assuming the hosting company just does not want to deal with it. Does anyone have any insight to the truth of the hosting company's statement? Also, adding CDONTS would be a configuration change - how would this impact hardware drivers?

Thanks in advance,

Taylor

you can by the following:

TO install CDONTS on a 2003 server

1) First, copy the cdonts.dll from a windows 2000 server CD.
2) put it in to C:\Windows\System32 folder
3) Register the CDONTS.DLL component on your server from the command prompt
and type: regsvr32 "%systemroot%\system32\cdonts.dll"
then click enter

BUT if it was me, I wouldn't advise it.
As CDOSYS has far better security settings and I don't know if the current code has any config settings, if not i would might it tight as possible and including authentication in it.

The best way I would do it is create .inc files and attach them to the old pages to reduce some of the process of changing the code.

summary:
the windows 2003 servers security has been changed to protect your from attacks. So going back to CDONTS is a step backwards. You should put it to the customer that you can not put a price on security and at what cost could it damage the company if a hack was achieved.

I agree with markoc, use CDOSYS. Regardless of their excuse, if the server is a shared web server I would not install CDONTS for a customer either, there are too many downsides and no upsides from their point of view.

I appreciate the advice. While I definitely agree about the use of CDOSYS over CDONTS, it will be tough to justify the amount of dev time necessary to root through 50+ sites, extract CDONTS code and replace with CDOSYS.

Is the jury still out on why this would effect Hardware Drivers?

Thanks again.

Do you admin the server? If yes, go ahead and register CDONTS. If you don't control the server, if it were my shared server there would be no story you could tell to get me to do a non-standard configuration on the server, such as installing CDONTS.

I doubt any hardware drivers would enter in the picture.