how to do iis 7.0 CLEAN reinstall on vista?

Question

Hello, I need to reinstall IIS 7.0 on Vista due to some unsolved configuration issues.

I thought it was easy: I uninstalled all IIS-related stuff in Programs/Features, restarted system, installed all IIS modules again (installation cd wasn't needed) and hmm.. everything looks the same - I mean wrong. I see all configured websites, modules, pools etc.

Is there any clever way to get CLEAN installation with CLEAN database / metabase / configuration files / clean installation files? Reinstalling whole OS is not a good solution.

Best regards,

Tomek

Answer 1

It is my understanding that all configuration in IIS7 is done in the different web.config files. So keeping them will keep your (miss-)configuration after a reinstall.

Answer 2

@Arjan Einbu: My question is how to get CLEAN IIS. No exisiting websites, only default. Default settings for handlers, mapping, modules, security. All DEFAULT settings, to look like after fresh installaion of IIS on fresh OS.

Answer 3

OK, now it's even worse. I uninstalled whole IIS using 'Programs and features', rebooted machine, deleted a few unimportant directories (c:\inetpub; c:\windows\system32\inetsrv) and tried to do clean reinstall. The problem is that after about 20 minutes of heavy hard disk work there's error message saying that setup has failed.

How can I fix it now without reinstalling whole OS? I'm wondering how setup ('program and features' addon) finds required installation files and how to force it to ask me for installation cd for fresh install.

Answer 4

I've encountered the same problem and formatting my hard drive was not an option.

The answer is already provided in a comment, and that is uninstalling the Windows Activation Services in the Windows Components before reinstalling IIS.

I hope this helps some of people out there, because i noticed we're not the only ones when googling the problem...