How to Configure ASP Error Messages and Enable Parent Paths on a Windows Vista Computer

I have discovered that there is surprisingly little accurate information devoted to the configuration of ASP on a Windows Vista computer (in my case, my laptop). This post will hopefully make it easier for those of you out there who have struggled, as I have, to install, configure and use ASP on a Windows Vista computer.

Prerequisite

It is assumed that you already have set up IIS 7.0 on your computer. If you have not done so, this Microsoft Technet article will walk you through the steps.

For those of you on Gateway laptops, IIS appears to be installed by default; I’ve used three and all of them (including this laptop) had IIS installed.

Part 1: Enabling ASP

If you have IIS installed on your computer and it can serve regular HTML pages without issues, yet ASP pages all return 404 errors, then you haven’t got ASP enabled. By default, ASP is not enabled within IIS 7.0. Of course, this means the first step in the process is to enable it.

Step 1: Open up the IIS Manager

Go to Start–>Control Panel–>Administrative Tools–>Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

If Windows Vista asks you if you wish to continue using IIS, click “Continue”.

Step 2: Select “ASP”

From the IIS group, select “ASP”.

Step 3: Enable Parent Paths

Expand the “Behavior” section if you haven’t already done so. Then, left-click the “False” portion of the “Enable Parent Paths” and set it to “True”.

Step 4: Enable ASP Error Debugging Messages

This step is only necessary if you wish to see the normal semi-cryptic ASP error messages and you receive a default error message that is similar to the following:


An error occurred on the server when processing the URL. Please contact the system administrator.

This error message is presented to the user when error message sending to the browser is disabled.

To enable error message sending to the browser, open up the “Debugging” section if you haven’t already done so and select “Send Errors to Browser”

Hopefully these steps will help those of you who have struggled getting ASP to work the way you expected it to on your Windows Vista computer. There are many other options you may wish to explore and experiment with (if your machine is one where you can experiment with), and other things you can do within the IIS 7.0 console to configure your computer as a web server.

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