Classic ASP: Security is Painful

I had to write some good old classic ASP code today and my classic ASP coding skills are so rusty that I put tons of errors in the code. I'm used to having basic ASP error messages on IIS5 and 6 which usually help me to track down problems. On IIS7 I only got the following though:

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

After investigating a bit I figured out that we changed the default for the "scriptErrorSentToBrowser" flag in IIS7. It's now false and you always get the error above. Here is how to change it:

1) Start an elevated command prompt. Right-click the command shell item in the Start-Accessories menu and select "Run as Administrator".

2) Run the following command: %windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd set config -section:asp -scriptErrorSentToBrowser:true

Once you are done with debugging your ASP app please set it back to false. There are lots of 'evildoers' out there! :)

5 Comments

  • I did some Classic ASP work recently myself. Oh how far we've come :)

  • That is too funny. I thought I was the only one that used those errors as a form of a debugger. Those were the days.

    -Update,
    -Publish
    -Refresh the browser and pray the error was on a different line. :-}

    Steve

  • This solution is not an option when using Vista 64 bit. Any other idea's?

  • Hello, I've tried this on my local machine but get this error:
    ERROR ( hresult:80070005, message:Failed to commit configuration changes.
    Access is denied.
    I am using an administrator account, so what should I do to give me or the system more access to this folder?
    Thanks,
    Michael

  • Michael,

    Right click on the command prompt and choose run as administrator.

    Richard

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