Trace IIS 7.0 Errors Like a Pro with Failed Request Tracing

When you are working with the web server, dealing with errors is a fact of life.  They creep in when applications change, when you deploy to a new server, make configuration changes, or add new functionality. The IIS 7.0 philosophy with respect to errors is that an error is better than something seemingly working in … [Read more…]

Connecting to IIS 7.0 configuration remotely with Microsoft.Web.Administration

As you know, IIS 7.0 provides a number of ways to manage configuration other then MWA, including IIS Configuration COM objects for script, IIS Configuration COM objects from .NET or native clients, WMI, the IIS Manager tool (inetmgr.exe), and AppCmd. While all of these can be used to manage an IIS 7.0 box remotely (AppCmd with … [Read more…]

Check IIS network connectivity with PortCheck v2.0

Due to demand for the original PortCheck tool, I decided to release the updated version that I myself have been using that has a few more features to help diagnose connectivity issues. [Download PortCheck v2.0] The idea behind PortCheck was simple – help diagnose the common “page cannot be displayed” or “server not found” errors … [Read more…]

IISSCHEMA.EXE – A tool to register IIS7 configuration sections

Download: iisschema.zip A very cool aspect of IIS7’s end-to-end extensibility is the ability to define your own configuration sections for your custom web server modules and handlers, that reside in the standard IIS configuration files side by side with IIS configuration.  These configuration sections can then be read/written with all the standard IIS configuration APIs and … [Read more…]

OleView freezes / hangs forever on Windows Vista

If you are working with COM and using OleView.exe on Windows Vista to view type libraries, you may notice that the tool hangs forever when trying to open a type library from a file or resource in a DLL.  I’ve encountered this problem myself on every Vista box I’ve tried it on, and have seen … [Read more…]

WCAT 6.3 web performance and scalability test tool released

Download: wcat.doc The NT Performance team just publically released the latest version of WCAT (Web Capacity Analysis Tool), the web performance test tool that the IIS team and NT Performance team use to conduct internal performance and scalability testing of IIS and ASP.NET. ****************************** UPDATE 1/24/2008: Updated WCAT 6.3 build is available that fixes the “NULL … [Read more…]

You can actually download the hotlinking blocker module now

Apparently, my previous post of the LeechGuard hot-linking prevention module ended up with broken download and image links.  No-one could download the module, and on my home network I could see it just fine.  The funniest thing is that I found out about this from an internal email forward that referenced this module, and stated … [Read more…]

Check network service connectivity with PortChecker tool

If you are unable to connect to a particular TCP service, such as a web server, ftp server, or anything else, you may be experiencing a number of both network and service connectivity problems: The hostname you typed in cannot be resolved The ip address of the server is not reachable due to network connectivity … [Read more…]