Enable ASP.NET in IIS 7 for Windows Vista

By default, IIS 7 does not have ASP.NET enabled on Windows Vista. So you can run basic static HTML websites on the the local IIS server but that's about it.

If you try to run an ASP.NET application without doing this, you will probably see a message like this:

This configuration section cannot be used at this path. This happens when the section is locked at a parent level. Locking is either by default (overrideModeDefault="Deny"), or set explicitly by a location tag with overrideMode="Deny" or the legacy allowOverride="false".

Here are the steps that need to be performed to enable ASP.NET in IIS 7 on Vista:

* NOTE: You must already have .NET 3.0 or higher installed before any of these steps can be performed.

(This is all from the perspective of using the Vista control panel, not Classic View)

Go to Control Panel -> Programs -> Programs and Features

On the left panel, you will see an option for Turn Windows features on or off

On the feature box, tree open the Internet Information Services node and then tree open World Wide Web Services -> Application Development Features.

Make sure ASP.NET is checked.

Tree open the World Wide Web Services -> Security node and make sure:

Basic Authentication and Windows Authentication are both checked.

Click OK and it will take several minutes while things are configured. Now, when you open back up IIS 7, you will see several more options to manage your .NET configuration problems.