ASP -- Server.CreateObject("MSWC.NextLink" problem on Vista with IIS 7

J

John Connic

Hi All:

I just setup a new machine with Vista Business Edition and IIS 7.
I had to turn on IIS 7 attributes including the IIS Manager. Not sure what
options I needed I turn them all on that even remotely look like I might
need them.

The IIS Manager looks total foreign to me but eventually I figure how to add
a virtual folder. I then started making script files in html, javascript and
vbscript. I would run them through IIS 7 using the URL:
http://localhost/../filename. This all worked fine and I was able to try
most of the code that I had used on IIS 6 under XP.

I then start adding ASP server-side calls to the script. I tried several
objects: Request, Response..etc. and they worked fine. The problem started
when I started using the Server object.

In particular when I added the line:

objCLC = Server.CreateObject("MSWC.NextLink")

When I add this line the Web Browser indicates that there is server problem.
I believe that these calls are from an activex object so is it possible that
somewhere in the IIS 7 configuration I haven't allow permission for activex
objects?

Any help will be greatly appreciated
 
J

John Connic

Hi Jon:

I did check for it in the system32 folder and it was not their. Is there
somewhere else I should look?
Also, if it is not there what do I do to get installed. I have Vista
Business Edition and in the install/open section under the Control Panel I
checked all the options including "ASP.NET", shouldn't that install it ?
 
D

Daniel Crichton

John wrote on Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:17:30 -0400:
Hi All:

I just setup a new machine with Vista Business Edition and IIS 7.
I had to turn on IIS 7 attributes including the IIS Manager. Not sure what
options I needed I turn them all on that even remotely look like I might
need them.

The IIS Manager looks total foreign to me but eventually I figure how to
add a virtual folder. I then started making script files in html,
javascript and vbscript. I would run them through IIS 7 using the URL:
http://localhost/../filename. This all worked fine and I was able to try
most of the code that I had used on IIS 6 under XP.

I then start adding ASP server-side calls to the script. I tried several
objects: Request, Response..etc. and they worked fine. The problem started
when I started using the Server object.

In particular when I added the line:

objCLC = Server.CreateObject("MSWC.NextLink")

When I add this line the Web Browser indicates that there is server
problem. I believe that these calls are from an activex object so is it
possible that somewhere in the IIS 7 configuration I haven't allow
permission for activex objects?

Any help will be greatly appreciated

The MSWC components were part of the old IIS Resource Kit installation, they
are not shipped with IIS. They were also part of PWS. Unless you can find
the old installation for IIS4 you won't be able to get this running on your
IIS7 setup, and even if you do find the old installation files there's no
guarantee that they'll work.

Dan
 
J

John Connic

Hi Dan:

Thanks for your help. So what you are saying IIS 7.0 doesn't fully support
ASP and that there is some other mechanism for creating objects! Is this
also true that you can not create any objects with server.createobject or is
next link the only case?

I did look on my XP machine which I believe has IIS5 and the nextlink dll is
there. As far I know I didn't install a IIS SDK to make this happen. It is
possible that I have put a VS SDK on this machine at some time. Maybe there
is IIS7 SDK ?
 
B

Bob Barrows [MVP]

John said:
Hi Dan:

Thanks for your help. So what you are saying IIS 7.0 doesn't fully
support ASP


No, what he is saying is it might not support "stuff" that was included
after-the-fact, such as the MSWC components. I've been developing with
ASP for years and i've never used these things.

And given the new ASP.Net world, you are unlikely to get much sympathy
for the failure to support deprecated components.
and that there is some other mechanism for creating
objects!

Huh? How did you come to that interpretation?
Is this also true that you can not create any objects with
server.createobject or is next link the only case?

Read what he said closely: NextLink _might_ be _one of_ the relevant
cases. The only way to find out is to make sure it is properly
installed.
Server.CreateObject works fine for properly installed, supported, dlls
 
D

Daniel Crichton

John wrote on Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:45:58 -0400:
Hi Dan:

Thanks for your help. So what you are saying IIS 7.0 doesn't fully support
ASP and that there is some other mechanism for creating objects! Is this
also true that you can not create any objects with server.createobject or
is next link the only case?

IIS7 doesn't ship with the MSWC components. I use ASP and
Server.CreateObject without problems on IIS7 and IIS6 - but I know that I
don't have the MSWC components, so I know that calls to those won't work.
IIS fully supports ASP - but it doesn't let you instantiate components if
they're not installed!
I did look on my XP machine which I believe has IIS5 and the nextlink dll
is there. As far I know I didn't install a IIS SDK to make this happen. It
is possible that I have put a VS SDK on this machine at some time. Maybe
there is IIS7 SDK ?

Are you sure you didn't install the components from elsewhere on that other
machine? I have XP on my PC right here and there is no nextlink.dll, and I
do have IIS5 installed. I haven't installed the SDK, or the Resource Kit
tools.

Dan
 
J

John Connic

Hi Bob:

Whoa ..............somebody wake up on the wrong side of the bed.

Sorry to alienate you with the statement that IIS 7 doesn't fully support
ASP. I have done some
research at the Microsoft Web Site about this before sending this post.
The statement:
objCLC = Server.CreateObject("MSWC.NextLink")
is fully document as part of the ASP API. Therefore I would conclude as
would anybody in the software community that the call should work. It
doesn't, as least not with MSWC.NextLink. The reason for this is that for
whatever reason the nextlink.dll is not included in the IIS 7.0
distribution.
Therefore anybody who wrote a script using this call at sometime in the past
with a IIS version that did have this dll included would now have a
backward-compatibility problem. That usually means that the newer IIS's
don't support that call and if it doesn't support that call it doesn't fully
support ASP. Notice I said ASP not ASP.Net.

The fact that you haven't used it is not important, Microsoft didn't come up
with ASP just for your use. They marketed it as software product for whole
community. I think your just caught up in this thing that no matter what new
techology that Microsoft comes out with is just great and forget about
supporting the previous version.

I don't know, or care, how you make a living but if I was to use the terms
like: "maybe", "might be" ..etc, with a customer I would soon be out of
business. It is Microsoft's responsibility to support their legacy products
for a reasonably amount of and indicate when they don't support.

By the way Bob, is "stuff" a new technical term??

Now to issue at hand, do you or one of your Microsoft cronies know where I
can get this nextlink.dll that is causing the problem. Now from what Dan
told me the server.createobject(..) construct appears to work OK but not
with "MSWC.NextLink".

Finally, is there another way, Bob- another word for mechanism, that I can
expose this functionality!!
 
M

Mike Brind

Daniel Crichton said:
John wrote on Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:45:58 -0400:


IIS7 doesn't ship with the MSWC components. I use ASP and
Server.CreateObject without problems on IIS7 and IIS6 - but I know that I
don't have the MSWC components, so I know that calls to those won't work.
IIS fully supports ASP - but it doesn't let you instantiate components if
they're not installed!


Are you sure you didn't install the components from elsewhere on that
other machine? I have XP on my PC right here and there is no nextlink.dll,
and I do have IIS5 installed. I haven't installed the SDK, or the Resource
Kit tools.

Mine appears in C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv on XP Pro with IIS 5.1. I
didn't knowingly install the SDK, unless it goes in as part of the full
install for IIS.
 
M

Mike Brind

Now to issue at hand, do you or one of your Microsoft cronies know where I
can get this nextlink.dll that is causing the problem. Now from what Dan
told me the server.createobject(..) construct appears to work OK but not
with "MSWC.NextLink".

You can google 'nextlink.dll', and plenty of sites offer downloads:
http://www.dllbank.com/n/nextlink.dll-download.html, for example. Or you
can find an older machine that has it and copy it from there, registering it
on your new machine.

Server.CreateObject("...") will work for any installed and registered dll,
as Bob said.

MSWC was never "part of" ASP. It was a library of components that you could
use from ASP. That's why you have to use the built-in ASP Server object to
instantiate objects from the MSWC library.
 
D

Dave Anderson

Bob Barrows said:
No, what he is saying is it might not support "stuff" that was
included after-the-fact, such as the MSWC components. I've been
developing with ASP for years and i've never used these things.

This was my initial reaction, as well. But then I saw this:

Deprecated and Obsolete IIS Features

IIS 7 will no longer support the following features found in
version 6:

The ASP Content Rotator and Nextlink components are
unavailable because these are rarely used items.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480184.aspx#inteinfoser_topic10
 
J

John Connic

Hi Dave:

Thanks for your input. You presented documented proof that IIS 7 no longer
supports the
ASP Content Rotator and Nextlink components.

Conclusion to all of this is that the srver.createobject(...) construct is
supported in IIS 7 but not the NextLink and Rotator, so whatever functions
they exposed are not availiable.

If that means that IIS 7 doesn't support ASP so be it. I have the answer to
my question and what supports what in the world of Microsoft is a relative
thing
 
J

John Connic

Hi Mike:
I have the same situation and don't remember installing any extra SDK's or
libraries there.
 
D

Daniel Crichton

Mike wrote on Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:51:47 +0100:
Mine appears in C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv on XP Pro with IIS 5.1. I
didn't knowingly install the SDK, unless it goes in as part of the full
install for IIS.


I searched for that DLL yesterday and nothing came up. I just checked that
folder and it is in there :/

It's also on my Windows 2003 Server and Windows 2000 Server IIS machines, so
I guess it was dropped from IIS7 - or the file gets installed but not
registered.

Dan
 
D

Daniel Crichton

John wrote on Tue, 17 Jul 2007 20:50:48 -0400:
Hi Dave:

Thanks for your input. You presented documented proof that IIS 7 no longer
supports the
ASP Content Rotator and Nextlink components.

Conclusion to all of this is that the srver.createobject(...) construct is
supported in IIS 7 but not the NextLink and Rotator, so whatever functions
they exposed are not availiable.

If that means that IIS 7 doesn't support ASP so be it. I have the answer
to my question and what supports what in the world of Microsoft is a
relative thing

IIS7 *does* support ASP. Nextlink is not a core component of IIS, so you
can't use that as the basis of deciding if IIS7's ASP support is complete or
not. Those MSWC components were some simple little objects MS knocked
together, and originally distributed as part of the IIS Resource Kit for
IIS4. Just because they included them with subsequent versions of IIS
doesn't mean they're part of ASP.

Copy the nextlink.dll from your XP machine to the Vista machine, then use
regsvr32 to register it. If it doesn't rely on other DLLs that are missing
in Vista, and the permissions are sufficient to allow it to be run, then
it'll work.

Dan
 

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