Windows 7 IIS 7.5 Read Access

We’ve recently started a Dot Net Nuke project, that required IIS 7.5, so we installed a test server on a local Win 7 workstation that we had available to do some basic development work prior to moving to a production environment.

We installed the the IIS server via the “Add Windows Feature” in Windows 7 control panel and got the server to run Asp.net 4 without a problem.  The issue we ran against was that the IIS server was NOT serving any content such as images or CSS files.

We ran through a whole slew of permission issues an ensured that the web root had all of the appropriate permissions for the Application Pool we were using in IIS.  Still nothing would work nor was there any information being written out in the logs.

Changing our approach we starting looking for issues in IIS not serving images and we stumbled across a life saver post on Open Stack (Source: Article)

Apparently, when we installed IIS there is a separate feature to allow IIS to serve NON-compiled content called “Static Content”.  Once we installed this “feature”, the DNN enterprise portal came up without a problem.

We are still shaking our heads as to why this is a “feature” of a webserver that needs to be installed separately.  In anycase, at least it solved our problem and hopefully will save others some time.

So if you are using Windows 7 and cannot see images: Triple check that you have “Static Content” installed as part of the IIS Windows Features.

As with anything, if you need our assistance you can also contact us directly.