NFI

IIS and WAS

One of the nice things that Microsoft provided with this beta 2 of Vista is pretty much all the bells and whistles. IIS 7.0 beta is one of those bells.

Turning this service on is not really all that difficult. Select the start menu, Control Panel, Programs, select Turn on or off Windows features. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be presented with a listbox where you can select IIS and the desired components.

The problem here is that the WAS (Windows Activation Service) was already installed and IIS depends on that service, otherwise it will fail to run. Normally this is not a problem, but you can install and uninstall IIS until the cows come home and WAS is just not anywhere to be found in the Services management console. This is after a fresh install of the operating system as well and Windows indicated that WAS was indeed installed (all options checked).

The solution to this is to remove BOTH WAS and IIS (expected reboot required and kindly prompted for) and reinstall both at the same time after the reboot.

Suddenly IIS services start as they should and you can continue on to the new IIS 7 management console.