Dynamic Web Content

If you’re having trouble with dynamic content, remember that by default, IIS serves up only static content. All dynamic content must be enabled in the Web Service Extensions portion of the IIS Microsoft Management Console (MMC). If you’re using Active Server Pages (ASP), and you don’t enable it, when clients try to access an ASP file they will receive a generic “404 not found” error. If you’re using extended logging, the IIS log file will contain a 404 error with a substatus code of 2, which means “File or directory not found: Lockdown policy prevents this request.”

To enable dynamic content, go to the Web Service Extensions section of the IIS MMC. Here, you will be able to add web service extensions and allow them to run.

The following web service extensions are predefined:

• All unknown ISAPI extensions

• All unknown CGI extensions

• Active Server Pages

• BITS server extensions (if installed)

• FrontPage Server Extensions 2002 (if installed)

• Internet data connector

• Internet printing

• Server-side includes

• WebDAV

To enable a web service extension, highlight it in the MMC and click Allow. If the extension you need is not listed here, you can add it and then click Allow.

Note 

A great tool for troubleshooting Web Service Extensions is the Allow All Web Service Extensions For A Specific Application hyperlink. You can use this to ensure that all the extensions on which a particular extension is dependent are enabled.