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Running CactuShop on Windows Vista

Item: #967
Date: 7 Mar 2007
Applies to
v5
v6

Question

I have recently installed Windows Vista. Can I run CactuShop locally on this? If so, how?

Answer

CactuShop will run on Windows Vista, but as with XP, you must have IIS (the Microsoft web server) installed. All versions of Windows Vista actually include IIS which is required for some of the functionality of the Windows Communication Framework (WCF), but Windows Vista Home and Windows Vista Professional have many common IIS features removed.

Versions of Vista above this should support the full IIS functionality and certainly be able to run CactuShop. IIS is typically not installed by default, so you will need to install this.

Go to Control Panel > Programs and Features. Click on the 'Turn Windows features on or off' on the left menu bar. Next you must click the check box next to 'Internet Information Services'.

When installing IIS 7.0, make sure that you install the IIS 6.0 compatibility features, as sites designed for deployment on IIS6 may well require these.

Once IIS 7.0 is installed...
Classic ASP support is not turned as default. Go to Windows Features > Web Wide Web Services > Application Development Features > 'ASP' checkbox.

User profile issues
By default, IIS 7.0 loads the current user profile. This is a change in behaviour from earlier versions of IIS. This change may cause compatibility issues with legacy ASP-based applications and ADO-based applications (such as CactuShop) because the current user may not have sufficient permissions to write to the temporary directory.

Microsoft Knowledgebase: Error message when you request an ASP page that connects to an Access database in IIS 7.0: "Microsoft JET Database Engine error '80004005'"

Custom 404s
The SEO friendly URLs in CactuShop v6 Pro rely on custom 404 functionality. Setting the custom 404 page of a web application in IIS 7.0 won't automatically activate it until we select the 'custom error pages' option in the 'error pages settings'. By default, 'detailed errors' is selected so it won't use our '404.asp' even if it's set as the 404 page unless we specifically tell IIS to use the custom error pages.

Debugging errors
By default, debugging errors are only sent to Windows Event Log. If you want to receive debug errors on the browser, you must explicitly enable this in the ASP settings - Debugging Properties > Send Errors to Browser (set to True). Remember that you will need to ensure you don't have IE set to replace the useful errors with so-called 'friendly' HTTP errors:

[#366] Showing clearer error messages in Internet Explorer

We have tested CactuShop on Windows Vista 'Ultimate', but in theory the same should apply to other versions of Windows Vista.

Remember however, that if you develop a site using IIS 7.0, you must take care to avoid using features specific to this new web server in your web if you plan to deploy the finished site on IIS 6.0 or below. Until Vista is available in a server form, this will apply to virtually every site at present.

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