| Before we start building sample applications, we must have IIS installed and running If you have not set up the IIS on your machine, you should do so now. To set up IIS on a Windows NT 4.0 machine, you must download (or obtain on CD-ROM from MSDN or another source) the Options Pack. This contains IIS 4.0, but when you install the components upgrade from Visual Studio it will include IIS 5.0 with Windows 2000 and XP Pro; IIS is installed by default. If for some reason it is not (such as an OEM installation that did not install it), you can install it by going into control panel, add/remove programs, and then clicking the Windows Components button in the installer applet. Once you have installed IIS, rerun the component update so that IIS can respond to ASP .NET requests properly. This mainly involves adding the appropriate software and creating the application Mappings. This is a list of file extensions and associated programs and . dlls that IIS loads when that type of page is requested . It is similar to file associations in the Windows file system. In order to tell if IIS is properly configured, you can check the Mappings page. To do this, right-click on My Computer and then click Manage in the context menu. This opens the computer management console as in Figure 9.2. Expand the tree and find the node shown. Figure 9.2. Managing IIS from the management console.  Right-click on the node and open the Properties pages. Select the Directory tab and then click the Configuration button as in Figure 9.3. Figure 9.3. IIS web site Properties page.  Once you have clicked the Configuration button, the Application dialog opens as in Figure 9.4. Figure 9.4. The Application Configuration dialog.  Make sure the correct associations are present as in Figure 9.5. If they are not you should reinstall the component update. Figure 9.5. The ASPX associations.   | 
