DLBATES.COM

Today I set out to figure out why I couldn’t get IIS under windows server to serve up .ASPX pages.
I had asked for a .net setup from IT and when I placed my files in the site I could not get it to serve up ASPX pages. It would serve .HTML and .ASP but not .ASPX so I decided to investigate myself. Hopefully my investigation and solution will help you troubleshoot this issue without wasting as much time as I had to. All of the steps below refer to IIS 6.0 and Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition.

Step one: Figure out if ASP.net is installed. You can do this several ways the quickest is to see if there is a ASP.net tab within your sites properties in the IIS Manager. Another way (and the way I chose to pursue) is to open the Control Panel and then Add/Remove Programs, and then click the Add/Remove Windows Components. Once Windows searches for installed components you will see a list. Click on Application Server and select details, this is where you should see ASP.net checked. If you don’t see ASP.net checked or if it isn’t there at all you will need to go to step two. If ASP.net is installed then skip ahead to step three.

Step two: Install ASP.net There are two ways to install ASP.net the easy way and then the way that you only do if you can’t see ASP.net in the Control Panel’s Add/Remove Windows Components section. The easy way is to check the checkbox in the Add/Remove Windows Components section and then follow the on-screen instructions. The hard way is to download the .net redistributable from Microsoft(the package linked is the 32 bit see bottom of page for X64).Install the package and then perform windows updates. This process will take 1-3 hours depending on connection speed and amount of updates needed. You will need to reboot when finished.

Step 3: ASP.net is installed but I still can’t see .ASPX pages: This can happen for several reasons and I could make you sift through thousands of google pages to figure out why, but that wouldn’t be very good of me I was getting 404 errors when trying to view an .ASPX page and this was because Active Server Pages where prohibited in Web Service Extensions. This KB Article explains why but you basically go into Web Service Extensions in the IIS manager and change Active Server Pages from Prohibit to Allow.

There we go I hope that helps you if you have a similar problem.

Thanks
David Bates

You can’t deny it with the introduction of the IPod, IPhone, IMac, and now Snow Leopard Apple is gaining and gaining fast on Microsoft. Everybody that I have spoken to admit’s that they secretly want a mac… they talk about apple as though it where an affair, as though it would be cheating on their pc to get one. They simply lust after Apple’s Products. (ok admitedly a little extreme but still you get the point.) Mac’s are here and everybodys talking about them. Why you may ask? because they are sexy, they are top of the line, and the advertising behind them is undeniably better than Microsoft’s. I am not only talking about the two guys pretending to perpetuate to be computers or the many people saying they want a mac on Microsoft’s ads. but also the advertising on their websites. Take a look at the screenshots below.

Click for larger image
First let’s say the obvious do you want a computer to build a resume? Or do you want a sexy cat with snow on it
Second Microsoft is not featuing it’s products on it’s homepage. Other than the tabs across the top I see no mention of windows, no pricing, I see no features. I see no mention of how fast windows is or how it supports a ton of hardware compared to the Mac. All I see is the news section where it even references Apple showing off it’s new version of office for OSX.

There was a toyota commercial that summed it up for me… “Everybody keeps saying how they were like the Camry so I bought a Camry” Makes sence to me… I have an IPhone for that very reason.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

When Frank Sandoval came to me with a screen shot proposing that Bing.com actually ran on Linux I was skeptical to say the least. No way Microsoft would do that… and why wouldn’t this be main news? I asked of him.

While I don’t know the why’s or what’s it is reported by netcraft.com that the ip addresses used to resolve http://www.bing.com is running on Linux OS. Screenshot, Live Page

Now, in Microsoft’s defense I cannot find another source to be sure as they use p3p in their html headers.
So the Linux OS could be netcraft reporting a load ballancer or who knows what… still you think if Microsoft was using one of it’s own technologies it would proudly be displayed on the home page.

Discuss below:
David Bates

@Rexm pointed out that StackOverflow had this question posted as well. Link

Another Note: It has been said to me many times that this probably Bing’s CDN and not Bing’s actual webserver. I wrote this post because if you type Bing.com into netcraft it says Linux is the server type. I do agree with many and even said that it is more than likely to be load balancers than bing itself… It turns out that it could be Akamai that has the linux servers than Bing being hosted on Linux servers… It should also be noted that Akamai is the worlds largest CDN, but I still find it interesting that Microsoft would have anything Linux related in their server platform even if it is the CDN.