Windows Server 2008 is the best OS to be released till date from Microsoft's stable. And the moment I got hold of the RTM build I could not resist installing it on my workstation. Due to the nature of my work I always prefer running a Server OS on my...

While trying to install Visual Studio 2008 on a Windows 2008 R2 machine you may get the following error. This is because Windows 2008 R2 ships with the .NET 3.5.1 framework. You just need to enable the feature from Server Manager . So before...

Most people on installing .NET 3.5 on the server "expect" an entry for v3.5 under the ASP.NET version Tab in IIS manager. And not finding that entry start panicking. If you have been one of those read on. The more tech savvy folks try to run aspnet_regiis...

This is a continuation of my previous post Using Windows Server 2008 as a SUPER workstation OS Here are a couple of things I missed in my previous post 11. Processor Scheduling As pointed out in a comment on my previous post; On Windows Server...

Recently while installing a SSL certificate on IIS 7.0 I got this error message CertEnroll::Cx509Enrollment::p_InstallResponse: ASN1 bad tag value met. 0x8009310b I could not complete the certificate request via IIS manager. But strangely after...

IIS 6.0 introduced a lot of features to increase reliability and security. As an architectural change the worker process w3wp.exe was introduced. To increase security IIS 6.0 by default launched the worker process using the NTAuthority\Network Service...

The SSL Diagnostics tool is a very useful tool for troubleshooting SSL issues.  It generates a detailed report of SSL settings for all the websites on an IIS server which helps in quickly identifying SSL issues. But the tool was built for IIS 5 and...

Consider you are browsing an asp.net web application that uses forms authentication and you are browsing the following url http://localhost:43751/FormsAuth/default.aspx?var1=test1&var2=test2&var3=test3 Once you time out you will be redirected...

“I install a SSL server certificate using the ‘Complete Certificate Request’ wizard in IIS manager and when I refresh the view the certificate disappears. “ I have heard that a couple of times and every time I used to go “What ?” Until someone showed...

Process Monitor and Process Explorer are great tools for troubleshooting issues on Windows machines. Process Explorer can be used to investigate a running process from handles to dlls loaded. Process Monitor is my favourate and it can be used to monitor...

I was recently working on a reporting web application that uses the Report Viewer ( ReportViewer ) control that ships with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). The Report Viewer control was rendering perfectly when I was developing using Visual Studio...

The machineKey element of the ASP.NET web.config specifies the algorithm and keys that ASP.NET will use for encryption. By default the validationKey and the decryptionKey keys are set to AutoGenerate which means the runtime will generate a random key...

On a 64 bit Windows 2003 machine IIS 6.0 could either be run in 32 bit mode or 64 bit mode. You toggled the Enable32bitAppOnWin64 metabase key and all the worker process would run in a particular bitness mode. With IIS 7.0 the Enable32bitAppOnWin64...

Passive FTP uses a range of ports to transfer data. This can be a problem because the port range that IIS uses has to be opened up at the Firewall. Many administrators would like to limit the port range between specific values so that they can have a...

IIS 6.0 does not load the user profile of the application pool identity. But with IIS 7.0 you now have a choice to load the profile if needed. This feature is disabled by default on Windows 2008. < applicationPools > < add name = " DefaultAppPool...

When it comes to orchestrating Kerberos authentication on IIS websites most people get it wrong when the question of Service Principal Names (SPN) comes up. Microsoft PSS gets a huge number of such issues. When you set a SPN you are telling the Key...

Metabase.xml is the central store where IIS 6.0 stores most of its configuration information. Its a plain text file and stores all the information in a simple XML format. The XML format naturally raised a notion of being able to XCOPY the config file...

The metabase is a repository for most IIS configuration settings. It resides as a plaintext XML file metabase.xml in the systemroot\System32\Inetsrv folder. All the websites and their corresponding settings are stored in this file. The problem with this...

CGI application were discouraged on IIS webservers because for every request a new host process had to be spawned raising questions about performance. The FastCGI protocol is set to change this. The concept is simple instead of creating a new host...

I have seen a lot of people searching for tools to simulate high CPU, Memory and Disk issues. Here are the tools I use Simulate High CPU Usage CPUSTRES.EXE is a tool you can use to simulate High CPU usage by an user mode process. Its available for download...

The way I see it here are seven goof ups that will most likely make it to the shipped product. FYI so that you don't end up getting surprises. 1. Clusweb.vbs Clusftp.vbs are shipped but not supported IIS 6.0/5.0 supported clustering of IIS servers...

The MSIL Disassembler (ildasm.exe) is a neat tool that can be used to view the MSIL code of a .Net assembly/dll. Many of you should have used it to peek into assemblies while debugging/troubleshooting. I use it a lot to check assembly namespaces...

Often assemblies are built in debug mode and deployed on production servers causing performance degradation. Using this module you can scan all your website folders to find .net modules that are built in debug mode. INSTALLATION 1. You will have...

Just finished writing an extension for IIS 7 that will provide advanced debugging features for IIS worker processes running managed code. It basically does three things 1. Find Debug Modules This feature will help you scan your website content...

If you as a developer are interested in taking quick peeks into memory allocation you can load SOS (Son Of Strike) in Visual Studio to do that. SOS is written as a WinDbg extension but can load in Visual Studio and do most of the stuff. To begin with...