Installing Virtual Server 2005 on Vista SP1 – (Ultimate)

It all started with the error "Installing the virtual server administration web site required IIS world wide web service to be installed and the IIS admin service to be running…..", and I spent most of my Sunday, trying to get Virtual Server running on Vista.

After lot of Google(ing) and trial and error, here is what was required:

Step 1: Enable IIS and the required features:

By default Vista doesn’t install Internet Information Server (IIS), even if you are running the Ultimate edition.

Adding it is pretty simple, go to Control Panel and choose the option to “Turn Windows features On or Off”, select the IIS feature and enable it.

If you just turn IIS on, the default options, that get enabled with IIS, do not have all the features you need to run Virtual Server. The options required are as below (highlighted in green):

 VS2005OnVista

Step 2: Successfully install the Virtual Server:

Before you install IIS and enable the appropriate required features (as above), Virtual Server won’t install properly. Well, you can install it, but without the web administrator console access, and without the web console you won’t be able to:

  • Create new Virtual Machine(s) and /  or
  • Be able to use your existing virtual machine due to lack of access rights

Anyway, once IIS is installed and configured with the settings as above, Virtual Server will install successfully.

Step 3: Some more settings required through IIS manager before you get it right:

If you try running the web administration console after the above you’ll get the following error:

VS2005OnVista.png-1

This is because of the ISAPI and CGI Restriction list settings on the Web server. Running executables in IIS can give rise to quite a few security issues, so by default IIS won’t do it.

Change this configuration by going to the IIS information services manager. In the Feature View for the root level, there is an option to modify ISAPI and CGI restrictions (as below):

VS2005OnVista.png-3

Right click on ISAPI and CGI restrictions and select "Open Feature", on the next screen again right click and select “Edit Feature Settings” and Allow unspecified CGI and ISAPI modules (as below):

image

I referred many articles online and most of them had warnings like:

  • "You’re blowing an enormous hole in IIS’ security with this sort of changes".
  • "It should be done only on a development machine, and by no means on a production box".
  • etc…

All valid and acceptable, any ideas what would you do if you need to do it on a production box? Would Microsoft like to comment here?

Step 4: The last but not the least:

The virtual server administration web site won’t run correctly unless the "Browser" is run as an Administrator (standard Vista requirement in most cases).

Nice experience…but not a good way to spend your Sunday…

December 9, 2008 · Rahul Desai · No Comments
Posted in: General, Tools, Tips & Utilities

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