CF8 kills IIS

Report · Oct 08, 2008

We're running a web server on a machine with Windows Server 2003, and IIS v6.0. Before the CF install, everything was normal.

I installed ColdFusion 8, and everything appeared to go well during installation -- no error messages or anything. However, the web server will serve no pages afterwards -- every time you try to access the web server, it comes back with an HTTP 500 "Internal Server Error" message on every page, whether accessed locally or remotely (including the CF admin/config page, so there's no way to configure CF after installation).

When I uninstall ColdFusion 8, everything goes back to normal. The IIS service is running, both before and after the CF8 install, so that's not the problem. And re-booting the server does nothing to change the problem. Only uninstalling ColdFusion 8 will solve the problem.

There is no SQL database installed yet, although we're planning on using MS SQL 2005. FlexBuilder 3 is already installed (and I assume installing FB3 also installed the Flex 3 SDK). Flex may have been installed with CF extensions, but I'm not certain how to verify that. There is a "single user" CF server that came with Flex 3 -- however, that is NOT running when I try to install CF8. Nothing on the machine is running, and no users are logged in (except the Administrator - me) when I'm installing CF8.

So basically, I need to know how to install CF 8 without killing IIS.

Report · Oct 15, 2008

I am having the same issue. Wish I could find a fix.

Report · Mar 02, 2010

Ok, I know it's been quite awhile since I originally posted this... But I only recently figured out WHY it was happening... (an Adobe tech remotely solved the problem before, and I never asked exactly what he did -- I only cared that it worked...)

But recently I needed to activate Certificate Services on my IIS 6.0 server, and I couldn't get it to work. I assumed something over the years had corrupted some files on the server, so I decided to reformat my server and re-install everything. Lo and behold -- SAME PROBLEM with CF8 killing IIS 6.0. But since we'd purchased CF8 so long ago, Adobe wasn't willing to help this time, without me buying an expensive service contract (which I couldn't afford.)

So I was left on my own to figure it out...

Turns out, the problem was 32-bit ColdFusion 8 on a 64-bit Windows 2003 Server OS... Win2K3 64-bit installs 64-bit IIS (as you'd expect) and 64-bit IIS cannot run 32-bit apps unless you run the following script at a Command Prompt (run as Administrator, of course):

C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts\cscript.exe C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPools/enable32BitAppOnWin64 "true"

(This assumes that your IIS is in the C:\Inetpub\ folder. Your installation may vary...)

BIG CAVEAT HERE!! If you enable 32-bit apps in this way, it will PREVENT ALL 64-BIT APPS from running on your IIS server. (IIS 6.0 cannot run 64-bit and 32-bit apps at the same time -- you choose which ones you want to run via the above-referenced script.) Unfortunately, we needed Certificate Services to run, which on the 64-bit version of IIS is a 64-bit app. (Can't host https:// sites without Certificate Services running. Can't transfer data over a secure ColdFusionAMF channel without CertSrv, either...) So we needed a 64-bit version of ColdFusion so that we wouldn't need the above 64-bit-app-destroying script...

HOWEVER -- there is only ONE 64-bit version of ColdFusion 8, and that is the Enterprise Edition. Adobe DOES NOT OFFER a 64-bit version of ColdFusion 8 Standard Edition. Yes, you can download a 64-bit trial-version of ColdFusion 8, and they SAY that by entering your software key into the program after you've installed it, it will convert itself from a trial version to a permanent version. HOWEVER, your Standard-Edition sofware key WILL NOT WORK in this manner!! Only an Enterprise Edition key will work to convert the 64-bit trial-version of CF8 to a permanent version. (Took me FIVE HOURS on the phone with Adobe tech-support to figure out why my perfectly legitimate Standard-Edition CF8 key wasn't working with the 64-bit version of CF8... And they never actually solved the problem -- a guy on a user-group that I post to figured it out. Adobe tech-support was USELESS for this particular problem.)

SO -- your ONLY OPTION here, if you have 64-bit Win2K3 and don't want to (or can't) enable 32-bit apps on your IIS installation, is to UPGRADE to ColdFusion 9, Standard Edition, 64-bit version. (Unless you want to pay thousands of dollars for the 64-bit Enterprise Edition of CF8.) Adobe does offer 64-bit versions of all editions of ColdFusion 9. Just not ColdFusion 8 -- only Enterprise Edition on ColdFusion 8.

I do hope this helps someone avoid the DAYS of troubleshooting I had to go through.

Laurence MacNeill

Mableton, Georgia, USA

Report · Apr 16, 2010

This is probably a late reply, but I wanted to thank you for your post. The time you took to shar this here saved me a lot of headaches.

Thanks Larry.

Josh

Boston, MA

Report · Mar 15, 2010

My experience with regard to many server applications is that "64-bit and 32-bit absolutely do not mix." You will wind up running "32-bit servers" alongside "64-bit" ones, although these can generally be virtual-machines. And you might well be doing this for many years to come.

I guess we got accustomed to "WOW," which let us run 16-bit apps fairly seamlessly on 32-bit Windows. But when 64-bit Windows came along, there was no "WOW32," nor will there be one. So, you'll be running two servers. And, licensing two servers. Or, you might simply decide not to upgrade any of your servers to "64-bithood," given that there is precious little advantage to doing that on a garden-variety web server anyway.