IIS Manager won't let me create an application

Question

Had a thing at work today on a Windows Server 2003 box. In IIS Manager I'm trying to create an application for a directory. So I've brought up the properties dialog and clicked the "Create" button and it did absolutely nothing - no error, the application name box stays greyed out and there's no gear icon on the folder. Also there was no event log message.

Has anyone seen this happen or know of a solution?

Answer 1

I just created a sample virdir under my Default Web Site and I see the below entry in Metabase.xml file. Sometime, the IIS UI does not reflects the changes made in the Metabase and hence can be misleading. Check the entry

<IIsWebDirectory    Location ="/LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT/samplevirdir"
        AppFriendlyName="samplevirdir"
        AppIsolated="2"
        AppPoolId="DefaultAppPool"
        AppRoot="/LM/W3SVC/1/Root/samplevirdir"
    >
</IIsWebDirectory>

I didn't had to restart IIS for the same.

Alternately, you can try Metabase Auditing to verify if the changes are really happening by following the article KB936696

Here's what I saw when I created the virdir. You see a Success Audit since I was able to create the virdir successfully.

Event Type: Success Audit
Event Source:   IIS-METABASE
Event Category: Object Access 
Event ID:   4505
Date:       6/4/2010
Time:       1:05:17 AM
User:       WIN-IIS2K3R2\Administrator
Computer:   WIN-IIS2K3R2
Description:
Metabase Set Data.

 Primary User Name: Administrator
 Primary User Domain: WIN-IIS2K3R2
 Primary Logon ID: (0x0,0x4E05E4)
 Path: /LM/W3SVC/1/Root/samplevirdir
 Property ID: 2102
 Property Name: AppFriendlyName
 Old Value: Default Application
 New Value: 
 Caller PID: 3996
 Caller Image Path: \Device\HarddiskVolume1\WINDOWS\system32\mmc.exe
 Result: 0x0


For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.