Any restrictions on development in Vista - iis

I'm looking at a new computer which will probably have vista on it. But there are so many editions of vista; are there any weird restrictions on what you can run on the various editions? For instance you couldn't run IIS on Windows ME. Can you still run IIS on the home editions of vista?

Vista Home Basic only has enough IIS features to host WCF services and does not have any of web server features for hosting static files, asp.net, etc.
Here is a link to compare editions. I would recommend going with Home Premium or Ultimate depending on whether the computer will run on a domain.

You can't run Aero on the 'basic' editions, and there are some 'extras' that only run in Ultimate. You probably won't care about those for development, though. The only thing to be careful of would be that it has the same client access restrictions that XP did.

Get Home Premium unless you need to connect to a domain controller (if you don't know what that is, you don't need it).

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IIS7.5 Debug vs Published permissions

I'm running Visual Studio 2010 and IIS 7.5
My site accesses a specified servers hardware for some statistical analysis.
When I debug my site in Visual Studio, I can access other servers hardware information with now issue. When I publish the site to IIS running as ASP.Net 4.0 appPool because the site is written under the 4.0 framework, the hardware retrieval fails. (note: when I run the site and analyze the local machine hardware, it works perfectly... the problem lies in analyzing another machine on the network.)
My question is, What is the difference in permissions a site is running under when debugging in Visual Studio in comparison to a published site in IIS 7.5?
Things I've tried...
Changing the app pool identity to every possible built in option, and my own domain profile, which is local admin on the machine I'm trying to retrieve hardware info about.
Changing the user that access the file directory of the website.
Changing app pools period. (The site has to run under .net 4.0, or else it barks out bad things).
I'm thinking I may need to install the site directly on the server that's being analyzed, but I find it odd that I can get all the data from other machine when I'm debugging. Any insight someone could bring would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!
This answer is, in some cases, you have to add the appPool identity running the site to the "Performance Monitoring" group for the local machine in order to allow an ASP.NET site access the server's local hardware resources...

Is there a way to install and run a local server on my Windows XP Home laptop?

I'm looking to set up a local server on my laptop which is running Windows XP Home Edition. I've noticed that it is impossible to install IIS on the Home Edition, but is there a way around this? Is there other software that I can install to run a server?
the purpose behind this is to mess around and play with ASP to create dynamic websites and my only computer I own has Home Edition.
Also, would running a server on my 5 year old laptop with 2GB of RAM be a good idea?
Windows XP Home Edition does not come with IIS (only Professional). There are workarounds available, but Home Edition was not designed for this. Visual Studio (full and express) come with Cassini, which is a version of IIS you can use for testing/development.
What is your desired result?
You can always install Apache. It should work fine on your HW.
This is what I use: http://www.aprelium.com/abyssws/
The X1 version is totally free and works great. You can then add PHP as needed (or not)
Yes there are ways like http://www.15seconds.com/issue/020118.htm
If you are developing using Visual Studio 2005, 8 , 10 you don't need IIS.
The hardware should be fine as you will be the only user accessing the website :)
Download Ultidev Cassini and be happy...Ez to configure and use in both localhost and local network.

Development machine IIS version vs deployment IIS version

My development machine is running Windows XP SP2 (and IIS 5.1 by implication).
Until recently our deployment environment was based around Windows Server 2003 (and therefore IIS 6.0).
We are about to move to Windows Server 2008 (and therefore IIS 7.0) for a new project.
Our projects use ASP.NET MVC and WCF Services.
Are there any key reasons for us to upgrade our development machines to run Windows Server 2008 (or possibly Vista, since this also comes with IIS 7.0)?
I would say it's in your best interest to upgrade your development machines to emulate as much of the production environment as possible within your means and resources. Otherwise you may fall into traps you're completely unaware of just by deploying an application from your development machine to the server's environment, which may pertain to differing versions of IIS, the version of .NET framework each machine is running, or just the way the code is compiled or executed at runtime.
Especially since IIS 7 has been vastly upgraded since IIS 5.1, why shouldn't you work closer with it's current functionality while developing before you missing out on some great opportunities? To really know what to expect from an application in production, develop it under the same circumstances.
Edit/Added: This link may help you see at least one significant example of how differing versions can affect your project.
I would recommend that you develop against the same major build as you intend to deploy on. That said, this leaves you with a few options. First, you could build against your local IIS installation (as it appears you currently do). That means that all of your boxes should likely be upgraded to Windows Vista or Windows 2008 Server (or Windows 7 as it is running IIS 7.5). Your second option is to deploy to a remote machine. It is entirely possible to deploy your application to a remote test machine running IIS 7 and remotely debug as well. The problem is that if you have more than one developer working on the remote site, it becomes problematic. IIS can handle the remote debugging on different webs for different developers, but depending on your architecture and configuration, you may still be sharing resources between instances of test web applications.You could occasionally deadlock each other. The only benefit is that you don't have to buy licenses for all of your machines (and potentially upgrade hardware to support the OS upgrade). However, I think that would be short-sighted. The loss of developer productivity wouldn't be worth it, IMHO.
There are major changes between IIS 5.1 and IIS 7.x. The changes to the architecture, such as the integrated pipeline, can result in drastically different behavior and compatibility issues. I think you will find that IIS 7 far more developer-friendly. The introduction of things such as failed request tracing, extended logging, and enhanced error pages alone make it much easier to track down errors in your application. In that regard, the upgrade is well worth it.

Differences between IIS 6.0 / Windows 2003 and IIS 7.0 / Windows 2008

I am considering currently to get a VPS for some of my development test. I found some VPS at a cheap price, which suits me as it's only going to be used as a sandbox.
So far I know it is possible to install .Net 3.5 on the windows 2003 without problems, if I am correct it will be also possible to use IIS6 for all my development including asp.net mvc.
I am looking here if there is anything that would prevent me from using IIS6. I looked on google and apparently the main thing about IIS 7 is the modular design for plugins. This shouldn't be too much of a problem as most of my devs will be for personnal use.
(PHP on IIS will run fine with IIS6)
Our devs are doing all their development against Win2k3 / IIS6 servers with .NET 3.5 and have not encountered any issues that would have been fixed with IIS7. Which is probably good since I've yet to stand up a 2k8 server.
For devs, I think the main thing IIS7 adds is the integrated managed pipeline that allows you to write .NET code for IIS instead of an ISAPI filter.
Shared configs, FastCGI, caching improvements, etc. I think of more as admin features. Useful, but won't really affect your dev time.
IIS7 will provide faster services, but IIS6 should be able to do everything you need (unless you need to run PHP or something of the sort on IIS).

Configuring IIS on Windows Vista Home Edition

My friend accidentally bought a laptop with Windows Vista Home Basic Edition. He figured out how to install IIS on it, but it doesn't seem to have either the management console or the admin tools. Is there any way for him to configure a site or import an IIS 6 config file?
EDIT: "Windows Vista Home Edition" --> "Windows Vista Home Basic Edition".
Not entirely certain here, but start the IIS console on another machine and tell it to connect to the laptop? The normal management console snap-ins all support remote operation.
Yu need to go back into Windows Component Setup and choose to install the Managemnet console(s).
Control Panel>Programs->Turn Windows Feature on and off.
You will see Internet Information Services in there, go under there and you will find the management console(s).
And yes, they are available to be installed on Vista Home. Once installed you can setup by opening Control Panel->Adminstrative Tools and you will see the IIS manager in there.
Per Microsoft Technet, IIS Management Console is unavailable on Windows Vista Home Basic and Starter Editions though it is available on Home Premium and above. And I can confirm it doesn't appear in the list of options when I install IIS.
Okay, not being on Vista I don't know for sure, but on XP the application which controls IIS is %SystemRoot%\system32\inetsrv\iis.msc. Perhaps hunting around for iis.msc would be a first step.
You should be able to do an upgrade to home premium. I'm pretty sure it's available at quite a low cost. My Home Basic laptop came with a CD that had all the necessary stuff for upgrading to a different version of Windows (I upgraded to Linux). If you really want IIS to do development work, you should really upgrade. Or if you just want .Net, you can install VS.Net Express and use the development server.

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