ASP pages not running in Window Server 2003

[Jim]

I've just bought a new Windows Server 2003 and I am trying
to move an exiting FrontPage website to this new machine.
I can't get ASP pages to run.

IIS 6.0 has been installed. From the snap-in, I have
configured "Web Services Extensions" to allow CGI
Extensions, ISAPI Extensions, Active Server Pages,
FrontPage Server Extensions 2002, Internet Data Connector,
Server Side Includes and WebDAV. All of this appears to
be running fine.

From the IIS snap-in, I have configured the website,
enabled Server Extensions and Extensions 2002 / Microsoft
Sharepoint. Again, all seems to be fine.

However, the website can only deliver static HTML pages.
ASP pages return an error. If I try to republish the site
using FrontPage, it returns the error message, "Front Page
server extensions need to be installed on this machine.

Any clues as to how to enable ASPs other than through IIS
6.0? Is there some other security setting in Windows 2003
that blocks ASPs and Server Extensions?

 

[Tom Kaminski [MVP]]

I've just bought a new Windows Server 2003 and I am trying
to move an exiting FrontPage website to this new machine.
I can't get ASP pages to run.

IIS 6.0 has been installed. From the snap-in, I have
configured "Web Services Extensions" to allow CGI
Extensions, ISAPI Extensions, Active Server Pages,
FrontPage Server Extensions 2002, Internet Data Connector,
Server Side Includes and WebDAV. All of this appears to
be running fine.

From the IIS snap-in, I have configured the website,
enabled Server Extensions and Extensions 2002 / Microsoft
Sharepoint. Again, all seems to be fine.

However, the website can only deliver static HTML pages.
ASP pages return an error.

Hard for us to help you fix the error when you didn't tell us what it is ...

--
Tom Kaminski IIS MVP
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/community/centers/iis/
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
http://www.iisfaq.com/
http://www.iistoolshed.com/ - tools, scripts, and utilities for running IIS
http://www.tryiis.com

 

[Aaron [SQL Server MVP]]

ASP pages return an error.

Uh, could you be more specific?

 

[jim]

-----Original Message-----

Uh, could you be more specific?


.

Thanks for the reply. When browsing this site on the
Windows 2003 Server, Internet Explorer will load part of
the page, but fields containing dynamic content will have
the message:

"The Database Results components on this page is unable to
display database content. The page must have a filename
ending in '.asp', and the web must be hosted on a server
that supports Active Server Pages."

The page does have an .asp ending.

thanks,

Jim

 

[Aaron [SQL Server MVP]]

Have you tried running a simple ASP page NOT involved with FrontCrap, e.g.

<%
response.write "Hi from ASP"
%>

Then you'll get an error message from IIS instead of from FrontPage...

 

[Ray at]

Have you enabled ASP support for IIS? This is not enabled by default in
IIS6.

Add/remove programs--add/remove Windows components--Application
server--Details--IIS-details--WWW service--Details--Active Server Pages

Ray at work

 

[joker]

Well to check if it is the FrontPage server Extensions try the
following. A slightly modified version of this was publicly available
as "813740 FP: How to Determine Whether the FrontPage Server Extensions
Are Installed and Functioning Correctly", but Microsoft decided to
change the security level so that it is no longer public. I only know
about this because I wrote it while I was on Word/FrontPage support.

If you are able to do all of this then it is most likely not the server
extensions as they like to blame them more often then they are broken.
Also if the server extensions are broken all you need to do is uninstall
them & reinstall them.

Item 1 : /_vti_inf.html (example <http://www.blahblah.com> /_vti_inf.html)

If we are experiencing any problems with the server side copy
of a web or having problems publishing a FrontPage web, browsing to this
file in Internet Explorer will give us two important bits of info.
First we should wind up at the : FrontPage Configuration Information
page. This is a good sign that the server extensions have been installed
on this server. On this page we want to right click and go to "View
Source". This will bring up the html for that page in Notepad. The area
we are interested in is about 3/4 of the way down the page and looks
like this:

--><!-- FrontPage Configuration Information

FPVersion="5.0.2.2623"

FPShtmlScriptUrl="_vti_bin/shtml.exe/_vti_rpc"

FPAuthorScriptUrl="_vti_bin/_vti_aut/author.exe"

FPAdminScriptUrl="_vti_bin/_vti_adm/admin.exe"

TPScriptUrl="_vti_bin/owssvr.exe"

-->

The FPVersion tells us which version of the sever extensions
have been installed on the server. 5 = 2002, 4 = 2000, 3 = 98.

The author.exe and admin.exe tell us that we are working with a
site that is hosted on a Unix server. If they listed as author.dll and
admin.dll then we would know this is a IIS server.

..DLL = IIS / Windows ------- .EXE = UNIX.

Item 2 : /_vti_bin/shtml.dll or /_vti_bin/shtml.exe



If we were to try to browse to this file on a customers site we
would expect to get the following message if the extensions are running :

Cannot run the FrontPage Server Extensions on this page: "".

If we receive any other messages it is a sign that the extensions are
not functioning.

Neither of these tests are absolute but they are very good
indicators and should be checked on every call dealing with a remote web.

Item 3 : How to test the extensions

There are some simple steps to test the extensions to see if
they are working. First thing I do is look for hit counters on the home
page and refresh the screen to see if it increments the count. If the
counter is working then chances are so are the extensions. Another way
and probably the most reliable is to try and open the site from Internet
Explorer. If going to File, Edit with Microsoft FrontPage opens a read
only copy of the current page with out prompting for user name password
then the extensions are probably broken. If we try and save an edit on
the page that opens and we get the "save as" dialog box we can be sure
the extensions are suspect. It is a good practice to mimic the customers
movements on the call; complete the same steps on your machine as you
have them do. If both we and they get the same results we haven proven
our point twice.