IIS issue I finally resolved!

[Ross M. Greenberg]

Some aspect of my Vista installation, possibly some of my peculiar installed
programs along with potential incompatibilities thereof, caused me to be
unable to install IIS,.Net Framework 3.0, or just about anything else
through the Turn On/Off Windows Features Utility.

After considerable effort with Microsoft MSDN Technical Support it was
determined that what they called in "in-place downgrade/upgrade" was called
for.

Basically, the word "Ultimate" was found in my registry, changed to the word
"Business" and in an upgrade using my original Vista DVD was then made back
to my Ultimate.

This took over 16 hours in total. I had to do Windows Update for eight
month's updates. If you ever have something similar, be patient and make
sure to have your product key available!

MSDN Tech Support was awesome!

There is a great deal to be said for paid tech support. Generally speaking,
you Penguinheads would have no idea of what I was speaking of.

You get what you pay for.

Ross

 

[Guest]

Why don't you take your petty insults somehwere else.
You had better change your name before asking for help here clown.

 

[DefecTalisman]

The only penguin here is you my friend for wasting money.
Rather save your hard earned bucks and use it to buy a clue...

 

[Ross M. Greenberg]

Why don't you take your petty insults somehwere else.
You had better change your name before asking for help here clown.

I'm a bit confused here, Mick: I was attempting to discuss how entirely
helpful and awesome MSDN Technical Support personnel were, and was
commenting on how one gets what one pays for. One of Linux's supposed
selling points is that it costs nothing and that you have the community of
Linux users to give you support as needed. My experience using various
different Linux products as well as various as a different Windows products
is that for more complex issues, a generalized support offered by the
community was not as good as a support offered to paying customers by MSDN.

BTW, I have found a better help here in this online community, and in all of
the Linux online communities combined. For the same price. My experience
has shown that you can always tell a Linux user. You just can't tell them
much. Unless you use *really* small words.

Ross

 

[Peter Foldes]

Glad you got it finally resolved Ross

 

[Ross M. Greenberg]

Glad you got it finally resolved Ross


Thanks, me too!

The next step, and now that I can access IIS7 via localhost, and that I have
a static IP, is for me to be able to put my new Webserver up on the web.

This is the first time I'm running IIS7. Any pointers or gotchas I should
know about?

Ross

 

[Mr. Arnold]

Glad you got it finally resolved Ross


Thanks, me too!

The next step, and now that I can access IIS7 via localhost, and that I
have a static IP, is for me to be able to put my new Webserver up on the
web.

This is the first time I'm running IIS7. Any pointers or gotchas I should
know about?

My pointer would be to learn how to harden IIS7, Vista including its
registry, file system, user accounts and the Web applications to attack,
facing the Internet. Otherwise, the machine is just hack bait.

Do you even know what a CSS attack and many other forms of attacks and hacks
are about?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=css+attack&btnG=Search

Just like I would not put a Web solution out facing the Internet using XP
pro, I wouldn't do it with a workstation version of Vista either.

You need to be coming with Win 2k3 server a Web solution server O/S that's
harden, along with IIS and Web solutions that are harden.

 

[Ross M. Greenberg]

My pointer would be to learn how to harden IIS7, Vista including its
registry, file system, user accounts and the Web applications to attack,
facing the Internet. Otherwise, the machine is just hack bait.

Do you even know what a CSS attack and many other forms of attacks and
hacks are about?

Thanks for the pointer, and yes, I have pretty good idea what these attacks
and hacks are all about. Fortunately, I'll be running in the Vista Web
server on a spare machine.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=css+attack&btnG=Search

Just like I would not put a Web solution out facing the Internet using XP
pro, I wouldn't do it with a workstation version of Vista either.

You need to be coming with Win 2k3 server a Web solution server O/S that's
harden, along with IIS and Web solutions that are harden.

I'm not familiar enough with IIS to know where it's soft and where to harden
it. I I'm just trying to figure out how to expose my IIS7 server to the
outside world/Internet.

Thanks!

Ross

 

[Mr. Arnold]

Thanks for the pointer, and yes, I have pretty good idea what these
attacks and hacks are all about. Fortunately, I'll be running in the
Vista Web server on a spare machine.

I'm not familiar enough with IIS to know where it's soft and where to
harden it. I I'm just trying to figure out how to expose my IIS7 server
to the outside world/Internet.

What are you talking about? If the machine is behind a firewall then you
expose port 80 TCP for HTTP and 20/21 for FTP and the Web server is wide
open to the Internet, along with the O/S.

Do you understand that if you have not taken measures to harden the MS NT
based O/S such a Vista that's hosting a Web server and is being exposed to
the Internet, then it's just hack bait. There are entire books and articles
that cover this kind of stuff, including IIS.

So you may not be concerned with it, because you're running it on a spare
machine. In the meantime, the machine is compromised and being remote
controlled and is being used to attack networks or other Web servers on the
Internet.

Man, seasoned O/S and Web server professional administrators can barely
protect the stuff on the Windows platform, and some can't do it period or
are ignorant.

 

[Ross M. Greenberg]

Well, unbeknownst to me, my DSL modem has a firewall within it, whose
default configuration blocks incoming access to port 80, making it rather
difficult to communicate with the IIS webserver!

Once I disabled that aspect of the firewall (the documentation for which
could easily fit between these two dots:.) I now have access to my never
been used before IIS server, albeit slower than I liked. Now to resolve
that problem...

Ross