IIS 7.0 on Vista Home Premium (Windows Authentication)

[Guest]

I recently purchased a new laptop which came pre-installed with Windows Vista
Home Premium. Although I really wanted Vista Ultimate to ensure I would have
no compatibility issues, the store I purchased Home Premium from said I would
need to buy the full or upgrade version of Ultimate which would have cost me
between £250 and £500.

So I took a chance and hoped that I would be able to establish a Remote
Desktop Connection to our Windows Server which I administer as that was the
only major concern I had. Well the good news was that Home Premium did allow
me to do that. So I thought my decision was a great one...

Because I develop software from home and for work, I also needed to migrate
all my Visual Studio 2003 code to VS2005 as VS2003 is not supported on Vista.
That in itself was a bit of a headache but nothing major.

My biggest problem now however is that I can't run the F5 function to enable
application debugging for my web applications in Visual Studio 2005 on my
Vista Home Premium version, as IIS 7.0 for Home Premium doesn't come
installed with Windows Authentication! So I am now stuck with a perfect OS
for my requirements bar the fact that one tiny feature (Windows
Authentication) has been excluded from the Home Premium version of Vista.

This is a little confusing to me as it was only last year that Microsoft
announced it's release of the Express editions of it's development platforms
specifically targeting home users or people wanting to kick start development
with Microsoft products. It is unlikely that these people will have either
Business or Ultimate versions installed so how will they debug their
applications?!

Does anyone know of a workaround for this problem or does Microsoft really
expect me to spend between £250 and £500 for Vista Ultimate and it's Windows
Authentication in IIS 7.0?

 

[Michael Price]

As a developer do you have access to MSDN? If yes you should then also have
access to all the versions of Vista including the appropriate keys.

 

[Guest]

I don't unfortunately as my work-related MSDN subscription expired in October
and we are struggling to work through the Microsoft Partner red-tape to get
ourselves re-certified.

The main issue here is what Microsoft plan to do about casual developers
(perhaps using the express editions of their software) who don't want to
spend between $499 and $10939 for an MSDN subscription or between £250 and
£500 for Vista Ultimate's only additional feature required for debugging -
Windows Authentication.

At the moment I am one of those people.

Thanks for trying to help though.

Cheers