Configuring IIS 6.0, ASP.NET in Windows 2003

Windows Server 2003 comes with ASP.NET 1.1 and the latest version of Internet Information Server (IIS) version 6.0. IIS 6.0 and ASP.NET 1.1 are designed to integrate seamlessly. By default IIS 6.0 and ASP.NET 1.1 are not enabled. There are two options for enabling IIS in Windows 2003. Option one is to use the Configure Your Server Wizard and Option two is to manually configure it.

Manually Configuring IIS 6.0 and ASP.NET 1.1

To manually configure IIS, open "Add or Remove Programs" from the Control Panel. The Control Panel looks like the image below.

Click on the ‘Add/Remove Windows Components’ which will open the Windows Components Wizard as shown in the image below.

Here, you need to highlight and check ‘Application Server’ and then click the ‘Details…’  button. When you click the details button the Application Server dialog opens and it looks like the image below.

Here, you need to check ASP .NET and Internet Information Services and click OK to return to the Windows Component Wizard. Click ‘Next >’ from the Windows Component Wizard to begin installing.

When installation is complete you will see the last screen of the Windows Component Wizard.

IIS 6.0 and ASP.NET 1.1 are now configured and available.

Lockdown Mode

When you choose to install IIS, it starts out in “highly secure” or “lockdown” mode. This means that many of the sophisticated web service features such as Active Server Pages (ASP), ASP.NET, Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) and server-side includes (SSI) are not functional. In this lockdown mode nothing works and only static content can be served. To be able to use the said features you can individually enable them by following these steps:

• Open IIS Manager by selecting it from Programs->Administrative Tools->Internet Information Services Manager
  
• In the left pane of the IIS Manager expand the node for the web server and click Web Service Extensions
  
• In the right pane, you will see a list of web service extensions and the status (Prohibited or Allowed) for each
  
• You can right click on the extension name and select Allow to enable it individually
  
• If you want to allow all extensions for a specific application, you can select the Allow all Web service extensions for a particular application icon in the Tasks section