ASP.NET 1.1, IIS 6.0 and 64-bit Windows

TobinTitus — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 15:08:00 GMT

A few days ago, one of the many distribution lists I belong to was presented with the following requests:

I’m trying to create a Web Service in Visual Studio .NET 2003 and am getting an error “Visual Studio .NET has detected that the specified Web server is not running ASP .NET version 1.1. You will be unable to run ASP .NET Web applications or services.”

The individual said that he had checked the script maps and everything seemed to be in order on the server. They had installed and uninstalled the ASP.NET extensions several times using aspnet_regiis.exe. After a few more communications the poster added:

(Potential complication: my machine is a 64-bit OS; does this change the equation?)

The answer is that running 64-bit Windows does have an affect on your ability to run ASP.NET 1.1 in IIS 6. ASP.NET 1.1 only supports running in 32-bit mode. Fortunately, IIS 6 on 64-bit Windows can run in either 64-bit mode or 32-bit mode.

The following steps to run IIS 6 in 32-bit mode can be found in our MSDN documentation:

Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.
Type the following command to enable the 32-bit mode:

cscript %SYSTEMDRIVE%\inetpub\adminscripts\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 1
Type the following command to install the version of ASP.NET 1.1 and to install the script maps at the IIS root and under:

%SYSTEMROOT%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_regiis.exe -i
Make sure that the status of ASP.NET version 1.1.4322 is set to Allowed in the Web service extension list in Internet Information Services Manager.

After following these instructions, the issue still wasn't resolved. In fact, the script maps for the web application were not being properly updated. I had the customer execute the "aspnet_regiis -ua" which would remove all versions of ASP.NET from the machine. To reinstall the ASP.NET 1.1 again, you then need to reissue the "aspnet_regiis -i" command (use "aspnet_regiis -i -enable" if you are using Windows 2003). This should allow you to run ASP.NET 1.1 on IIS 6.

Keep in mind, however, that IIS 6.0 cannot run in both 64-bit mode and 32-bit mode at the same time. By running IIS 6.0 in 32-bit mode on 64-bit Windows, ASP.NET 2.0 applications will also run in 32-bit mode.

Tobin Titus Blog : ASP.NET 1.1

ASP.NET 1.1, IIS 6.0 and 64-bit Windows