Jeez... how do I even start ????

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mike
  • Start date Start date
M

Mike

So, I've been trying to do "MyFirstVBWebApp" and I am hitting numerous
roadblocks. After much google'ing, here is what I have done

(XP Pro SP1, IIS 5.1)
1. Uninstalled IIS
2. renamed the existing inetpub directory
3. Started the Distributed Transaction Coordinator
4. Reinstall IIS
5. regsvr32 (v1.1.4322)\aspnet_isapi.dll
6. (v1.1.4322)\aspnet_regiis -i
7. Control Panel - User Accounts - (Advanced tab ) Advanced ... User ASPNET
has
checked - User cannot change password
checked - Password never expires
unchecked - Account is disabled
disabled - Account is locked out
8. Inetpub - Properties - Security tab - added ASP.NET machine account
(Read&Execute, List Folder Contents, Read, Write)
9. wwwroot - Properties - Security tab - added ASP.NET machine account
(Read&Execute, List Folder Contents, Read, Write)

I then start VS.NET - New - Project -> Visual Basic Projects - ASP.NET Web
Application with a location http://localhost/MyFirstVBWebApp\
I get the infamous "The Web server reported the following error when
attempting to create or open the Web project located at the following URL :
http/localhost/MyFirstWebApp
HTTP/1.1 500 Server Error'

I don't have much hair left, I don't want to pull out the rest of it.....Did
I miss a step ?

Any insight ?

Thanks,
Mike
 
I don't have much hair left, I don't want to pull out the rest of
it.....Did
I miss a step ?
Click to expand...

You didn't miss a step. You DID do a lot of things that are completely
unnecessary. Hard to tell at this point what your situation is.

However, your situation brings a principle to mind that would help you and
many others who come here after thoroughly entangling themselves with one
tar baby or another.

There are 2 basic questions one can ask about programming: HOW, and WHY.
Most people are too impatient to bother with WHY. They just want someone to
tell them HOW to do x, y, or z. This can be disastrous, especially when
Googling. After all, there is no Internet rule that people responding to a
question, or publishing some information, that the information has to be
true. There is no standards organization that polices the Internet and tells
people who don't know what they're talking about to keep quiet. So, HOW is
at best a temporary fix to a temporary problem, and at worst, a complete
fabrication.

The good news is, if you bother to teach yourself the WHY of what you learn,
you will find that HOW can be easily derived from the answer. HOW is derived
from WHY. WHY is NOT derived from HOW.

Now, what makes me think you're one of those people? You've listed a long
list of "what I have done." You don't at any point express any WHY to it,
only that some web site you Googled told you to. WHY did you uninstall IIS?
WHY did you rename the existing inetpub directory? WHY did you start the
Distributed Transaction Coordinator? WHY did you reinstall IIS? WHY did you
regsvr32 the ASP ISAPI DLL?

Now WHY am I saying this? Well, to begin with, the operations I just
reiterated to you are completely unnecessary, and I honestly don't know what
the cumulative effect of all of those operations is going to be. In other
words, you are now completely entangled with the tar baby.

The funny part is (funny "hmmm" not funny "ha-ha") that the reason people
skip the WHY is impatience. Ironically, these people inevitably spend MUCH
MORE TIME straightening themselves out than they would have if they had
taken time up front to study and figure out the WHY of what they were doing.

Now, as to WHY you've received an HTTP 500 server error, well, that's almost
impossible to tell from what you've described. The 500 server error
indicates that something went wrong with the ISAPI doing the processing of
the resource. It could be something as simple as a code error in your page.
It could be almost anything.

So, what exactly do you want to do?

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
Neither a follower nor a lender be.
 
With all the changes you made, not sure if trying to fix your current
configuration will be the best way to go. I would try installing XP Pro and
VS.NET on a new or different partition and work from there up, the less
applications you have in your development environment the better.

Regards.
 
Well, I do thank you for replying....

For starters, this machine isn't mine, its my companies. As such, its
gotten passed around. In a small company, networks, etc get changed.
Somewhere
along the line, my machine name got changed.

When I would start IIS from the Administrative tools, the old machine name
would be listed, but I could "connect" to it to expand the "Web sites" -
"Default web site"
portions of the IIS mmc snap-in. I could "connect" to the new machine name,
though. Then I could expand the "Web sites" - "Default web site" portions.
After closing
IIS snap-in and re-opening it, everything would be reverted and I would have
to do the whole process over. Anyway, that caused my decision to
uninstall/re-install IIS.
I do not think that itself is a major ordeal.

After reading msdn article 306005, I ran the aspnet_regiis.exe and
regsvr32'ed the aspnet_isapi.all. Still no luck.

Upon futher google'ing, I found many other posts that described my same
situation, with the same resolution as described in the msdn article, so
I attributed a certain amount of trust to the scenarios these people
described. A lot of these other posts also mentioned the ASPNET user. All
the things
I did with the ASPNET user were educated guesses I made. They can be easily
backed out. And they obviously did not solve my problem.

Being a computer professional for the last 20 years (you probably don't
believe that) I have found out the quickest way to figuring out the
WHY of things, is to know the HOW. From that, I can figure out the WHYs. If
anyone "in the know" would go into the why(s), thats fine with me, but
I would not ask someone to devote that much time to my problem. In my
participation in the newsgroups, when I would answer a question as to how
to do something, I have always made the assumption that if the author was
savvy enough to get to newsgroups, they would be able to figure out the
why's
of my answer, if not they could feel free to ask that also.

I have been developing vb.net and c# apps for the last year or so (VB,C,C++
apps for years before that), but have just now come accross the need to
develop
a web application. I understand the architecture, etc, but the devil is in
the details. My particular detail in this case, is just getting started.

As far as what I want to do, I want to run IIS on my laptop (XP Pro, SP1)
and develop a proof of concept ASP.NET application using VB.net or C#.
When I open VS.net, I do a New -> Project -> VB.NET or C# ASP.NET Web
application. When I first tried I would get errors of how VS.net did not
think
the web server was running on this machine. That is when I looked at the IIS
snap-in and discovered the machine name differences, hence paragraph 2.
After
that, vs.net would produce different errors, that ended up pointing me to
msdn 306005, hence paragraph 3.

All-in-all, here I sit. I have no existing web pages yet, because I cannot
even create my first one. Hopefully that will give you the history of my
ordeal. That latest error that
I am receiving when I try to open a VS.net ASP.NET Web Application is as
follows....

The Web server reported the following error when attempting to create or
open the Web project located at the following URL:
htp://localhost/WebApplication1'.
'HTTP/1.1 500 Server Error'

Any further assistance would be appreciated

Mike
 
Mike,

if the machinename was fiddled with, the resolution
by way of fixing it would probably be long/difficult.

There's many configuration setings which depend on
the machinename and the local administrator account.

Trying to identify/fix them all will be a nightmare.

What I'd recommend at this point is a reinstall of
the OS and IIS/.NET Framework/ASP.NET.

Starting out fresh will save you a lot of headaches,
and assure you of a standard installation in which you
can do what you want to do : code, a lot more easily.

best regards,



Juan T. Llibre
ASP.NET MVP
===========
 
Crap, I've never really done that before. Can I re-install the OS without
wiping my hard drive? I might just try to re-install vs.net first....
 
Most OS re-installations, including XP Pro, preserve the
settings they find in the currently installed registry, unless
you select a "clean install" from the setup menu.

So, a "clean install", including drive reformatting
is of the essence in this case, if you want a clean
system you can just turn on and work with.

Does your company have a network administrator
you could badger until they reinstall it for you ?

It would be easy for you to "sell" that idea to him/her,
based on the time/effort which that would save.

The networking settings are critical, and only a sys admin
can do that for you without going through a lot of hassles.

Also, littlke things, like preserving mail settings and
email accounts for your contacts would be essential.

If you need other data saved, a standard data backup
would preserve whatever you need to get going again.

I wish I had better news for you, but name changes
and different admin accounts in a much-modified box
will give you no end of trouble if you simply try to fix
the problems you get on a fix-as-you-find-them basis..

Fixing one nest of troubles will uncover another one,
if you know what I mean.

If someone else has a better idea, I'd like to know about it.

Good luck!

Come back with your questions once you have a clean system.



Juan T. Llibre
ASP.NET MVP
===========
 
Can you re-install the OS without wiping your hard drive? I wouldn't advise
it. Any time I re-install an OS, I slick the system drive. Just a good
safety practice. Clean slate. Less variables to consider when things go
wrong. Of course, any time I install an operating system, I make sure that I
have at least 2 drives available. If I only have 1, I partition it. I
immediately move the "My Documents" folder to the non-system drive, and I
always store data on the non-system drive, so that the next time I have to
reinstall the OS, I don't have to worry about losing any data. I also move
the Outlook email pst folders to the non-system drive.

If you inherited the computer from someone else, you should have slicked it
and reinstalled the OS first thing. As my mom used to say, "You don't know
where it's been!"

And I would have to agree with the others: Start from scratch.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
Neither a follower nor a lender be.
 
Back
Top