Common GotCha’s for Installing a ASP.NET application on Windows 2003+ Server

Common GotCha’s for Installing a ASP.NET application on Windows 2003+ Servers

There have been many changes in the Windows Server over the years and installing an asp.net web application can be difficult for many users. Most of the issue you usually find are around security lock downs.

I have compiled a list of common Got Cha’s I see for people installing asp.net on windows server.
When installing IIS, need to also enable ASP.NET for IIS

This has been around since Windows 7 but is still a common GotCha. In order to run a ASP.NET application on Windows 2008 R2, you will need to go in a enable IIS when doing this remember that you also need to enable ASP.NET Development (which will automatically include dependencies)

Application Pool Identity Permissions

This is only a recent one and it’s only on Windows 2008 R2 and IIS7.5. In a security update Microsoft changed the default identity for application pools to be generated user, which can be found in the user list. So when adding permission for that user you need to type in the user name directly.

You will need to enter as follows:

Prefix Application Pool Identities with
IIS AppPool\

Thus to grant rights to the DefaultAppPool you need to use
IIS AppPool\DefaultAppPool.

If your application pool is named mywebsite.com, then your identity would be
IIS AppPool\mywebsite.com
Windows Blocks files downloaded from Internet(Unblock Assemblies)

When you download an assembly or different file from the internet and Windows detects that it has been downloaded from the internet it will block the file, so it can’t be used or executed. This has been around since Windows Vista and it is simple to fix, just right click on the file to open the file properties and unblock.



Ever had the error: Request for the permission of type 'System.Web.AspNetHostingPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' failed This could be your solution, if your assembly files are blocked.