IIS can be used to test server-side programs using ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, etc. Several steps are required: The directions below are for Windows 7 and IIS7.
1 . Control Panel>Programs>Programs and Features>Turn Windows Features On and Off - Under Internet Information Services, some of these need to be turned on. On my machines, I have the following items turned on:
2. To get descriptive error messages to show up in the browser, Control Panel>System and Security>Administrative Tools>Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Click on Default Web Site on left and then double-click on ASP icon at the right and under Debugging Properties, set "Send Errors to Browser" property to True.
3. When you type http://localhost, IIS will display what is at the root of c:\inetpub\wwwroot
To use IIS with files located elsewhere it is convenient to create a virtual directory in IIS. To do this, Control Panel>System and Security>Administrative Tools>Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Right click on Default Web Site and choose Add Virtual Directory. Give a name to the directory and specify the physical path. If this virtual directory is named bill, you would access the directory in the browser by typing http://localhost/bill
4. Apparently there are no JET drivers for 64 bit Windows, so if you are connecting to an Access database (.mdb) using a DSN-less connection string (e.g. Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)}; DBQ=" ...), you may get an error message "Data source name not found and no default driver specified." To fix this, select Control Panel>System and Security>Administrative Tools>Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. Click on Application Pools on the left and then on the right, select a pool and click on Advanced Settings at the right and then set "Enable 32-bit Applications" to True. I did this for all pools showing.
Revised: March 13, 2010. Comments to Bill Pegram, bill@billpegram.com