Microsoft Web Platform Installer

sweisfeld — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:39:00 GMT

While I was not able to attend PDC, Microsoft did good by the community and has provided free recordings of many of the sessions (http://www.microsoftpdc.com). While this is cool and has some great content, the purpose of this blog post is to talk about the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (http://www.microsoft.com/web/channel/products/WebPlatformInstaller.aspx). This tool allows for single deployment model for all the bits and pieces needed to put together a clean PC image for a developer use (i.e. VS.NET, SQL SVR, and IIS). IMHO this is a great idea and Microsoft is only scratching the surface of what they could do in this space. Currently the tool works for the express editions, which is good for the hobbyist and more importantly at schools. With my experiences teaching .NET at the University anything that helps bring students into a working development environment faster and easier is goodness. However this will become much more valuable when it gets pushed into the enterprise environment. Currently one of the most frustrating jobs that I have my day job is helping team members with the setup of development machines. Anything that MSFT can do to stream line and reduce errors in the process of installing the entire suite of development tools is much appreciated.

Be warned aspnet_regiis might change the version of .NET on your Virtual Directories

sweisfeld — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 21:52:00 GMT

Yesterday we ran aspnet_regiis in an effort to get WCF working on our server (see this KB article for details on that http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752252.aspx) and all heck broke loose. Apparently the tool went through the websites and virtual directories on our server and change some of the ones set to .NET 1.1 to .NET 2.0. It was strange that it was only some of the directories and very frustrating to find, but it is fixed now and I thought I would share it with you all.