ColdFusion Muse

Can't Save applicationHost.config?

In an email group I am in there was a problem brought to the floor regarding removing the wildcard mapping from the applicationHost.config file in IIS 7.5. This file resides in the system32/inetsrv/config directory of your windows server and it contains the defaults for all sites. The defaults can be overridden using a web.config file in the root directory of an individual site. The user in question was trying to manually uninstall the connectors for ColdFusion 9. After going through all the steps there was one thing he could not seem to get rid of - a wildcard mapping for the jrun_iis6.dll in the handler mappings of IIS. He went down the list of things he had done and we all agreed that each file and step was complete - including removing the "global" mapping for this handler from applicationHost.config. While we were puzzling super guru and CFCelebrity Charlie Arehart (he of CF 411 fame) reminded us of a "gotcha" that occurs with files in the system32 directory and subdirectories.

The scoop is, if you open the file using a 32bit editor (say Notepad++) from system32/inetsrv/Config Windows does the old switcheroo and opens the identical (but unused) file in the SysWoW64/inetsrv/Config directory. You are editing the wrong file and you don't even know it (wow! ... or maybe I should say Wow64!). As an aside, this poorly named directory, SysWoW64, stands for "Windows on Windows 64 bit" - meaning files in this directory are "old 32 bit" windows files running on this "64 bit" version of windows. Not only is that unclear, it makes the continued use of system32 confusing. Why not just use system32 and system64? Ah well, I digress.

The Fix

The long and short of it is, to make sure you are editing the correct file, use notepad (the 64bit version ships with the OS). To avoid mistakes, open notepad first as Administrator, then navigate to and open the file in the /system32 directory. If you don't you will pull out your hair trying to figure out why your changes won't take. For more information check out this blog post on the issue by Mike Ratcliffe.

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