We are all now well aware of the compatibility issues that working within Vista can entail. From explaining to clients how to find the mail icon by switching to classic view to a near complete lack of driver support, a lot of workarounds have been created by savvy I.T. professionals. A local Miami IT support client of ours needed a solution to run IIS 8 on a Vista 64 bit server, which is not usually supported, and we rose to the occasion. Without further ado:
Virtual directories in IIS are hosted in an application pool. An application pool is the host process for one or more Web applications. When you deploy a 32 bit application to IIS 7, the application is deployed to the Default AppPool. By default, this application pool uses the Integrated managed pipeline mode, where managed code is integrated into the request processing pipeline.
Although you can configure the DefaultAppPool to use the Classic mode, changing the setting will affect all applications running in that application pool. A better option is to create a new application pool for each website. Please follow the simple steps below to do so. It can be a tricky process, so feel free to contact us networking support team if you want us to take a look.
Creating an application pool
If you choose not to create a new application pool, you must complete step 4 in the following procedure for the application pool that hosts your application.
To create and configure an application pool:
1. In IIS Manager, select Application Pools.
2. In the Actions pane, select Add Application Pool.
3. Provide a name, such as myweb, for the application pool.
4. Set Managed Pipeline Mode to Classic and click OK.
Enabling 32-bit applications on 64-bit Vista
On 64-bit Vista, you must enable the application pool to run 32-bit applications.
To enable 32-bit applications on 64-bit Vista:
1. In IIS Manager, select Application Pools.
2. In the list of Application Pools, select the application pool you have configured for use i.e. myweb.
3. In the Actions pane, select Advanced Settings under Edit Application Pool.
4. Expand the General settings, set Enable 32-bit Applications to True, and click OK.
To move an application into a different application pool:
1. In IIS Manager, expand Web Sites and Default Web Site.
2. Right-click the virtual directory for your application and click Advanced Settings.
3. Select the drop-down list next to the Application Pool property, select the application pool you created, and click OK
4. Reload the application.
To create ODBC conection for 32bit application:
There are two copies of odbcad32.exe on Windows Vista x64, one is stored at c:\windows\system32\ and one is stored at c:\windows\syswow64\.
We need to use c:\windows\syswow64\odbcad32.exe that will have all our access data providers.
Hope this helps. Please let us know if we can be of any help. For more about us please visit SDSol's website at SDSol.com: Custom Software Development, Online Development, and Miami IT support.
Best,
SDSol
About online solutions: SDSol Technologies is providing the above information as a service to our customers and online visitors. Please note that it is by no means foolproof. This should simply be seen as a reference of our findings when we encountered the same issue. To make sure your server and networking tasks are done right, please contact your local IT processional.
