Technology Blog

Author: Akash Heranjal

To help minimize the attack surface of the server, IIS 6.0 is not installed on Windows Server 2003 by default. When you first install IIS 6.0, it is locked down — which means that only request handling for static Web pages is enabled, and only the World Wide Web Publishing Service (WWW service) is installed. None of the features that sit on top of IIS are turned on, including ASP, ASP.NET, CGI scripting, FrontPage® 2002 Server Extensions from Microsoft, and WebDAV publishing. If you do not enable these features, IIS returns a 404 error. You can enable these features through the Web Service Extensions node in IIS Manager.


When does this value require change?

If you are running ASP or ASP.Net or CGI Scripting application(s) on IIS 6, you would need to allow the relevant web extensions. By default all dynamic scripts on IIS 6 are disallowed.

Related Web References:
o http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Libr...
o http://support.microsoft.com/kb/332060


How to make the Change?

o Open IIS 6 and choose “Web Service Extensions”
o The right panel will display the list of web service extensions available with its current status
o Choose appropriate web extension and click on “Allow” button to enable chosen web extension