Does IIS7 use different default membership provider?

Question

Hello,

Say I create CreateUserWizard control and use AspNetSqlMembershipProvider (defined in machine.config) as a default membership provider. Assuming I change default provider's requiresQuestionAndAnswer attribute to false, then CreateUserWizard control template should not be required to provide Question and Answer fields. But if I request the page via IIS7 I get the following exception:

CreateUserWizard1: CreateUserWizardStep.ContentTemplate does not contain an IEditableTextControl with ID Question for the security question, this is required if your membership provider requires a question and answer.

A) The above exception suggests that when requesting a page via IIS7, runtime doesn’t use AspNetSqlMembershipProvider (defined in machine.config)as a default provider?! If true, then why is that?

B) And where can I find the definition for IIS7’s default provider?

thanx

EDIT:

Here is <Membership> element in machine.config file:

    <membership>
     <providers>
  <add name="AspNetSqlMembershipProvider" 
         type="System.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProvider, System.Web,Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" 
         connectionStringName="LocalSqlServer" 
         enablePassswordRetrieval="false" 
         requiresQuestionAndAnswer="false" 
         applicationName="/" requiresUniqueEmail="false" 
         passwordFormat="Hashed" maxInvalidPasswordAttempts="5" 
         minRequiredPasswordLength="7" 
         minRequiredNonalphanumericCharacters="0" 
         passwordAttemptWindow="10" 
         passwordStrengthRegularExpression=""/>
    </providers>
   </membership>

Are you changing the machine.config for the correct version of runtime?

I'm not sure what you mean by that. I'm running Asp.Net 3.5, which I think uses Asp.Net engine version 2.0.50727. Thus I manipulated machine.config located inside C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG

Answer 1

IIS7 uses its own configuration file located at %windir%\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config. However, this file deals with IIS7 specific configuration (e.g. <system.webServer>) and not <system.web> stuff. I believe those are still read from machine.config and web.config files. Indeed, the default value (specified in machine.config) for requiresQuestionAndAnswer for the AspNetSqlMembershipProvider is true on my machine.

UPDATE:

Under a 64 bit OS, a .NET application can either run on a 32 bit CLR in WOW64 mode or natively run under x64 mode. Each .NET framework instance has its own set of config files and ignores all other configuration files.

IIS7 on a 64 bit OS runs applications in 64 bit mode by default. You can, however, set an application pool to run as a 32 bit WOW64 process (enable32BitAppOnWin64, which you can set in Advanced Settings dialog for an application pool in IIS7 manager). If you do that, obviously it'll use settings from 32 bit machine.config. The reason VS Web server uses 32 bit machine.config is exactly this: it runs as a WOW64 process.

Answer 2

Where exactly did you make the change on "requiresQuestionAndAnswer"? If it is on machine.config, IIS should honor that.