Viewing Virtual Directores in IIS7 Manager

Question

According to this page, I should be able to view and delete Virtual Directories from IIS Manager: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753247(WS.10).aspx.

I can confirm that VDirs exist by running this from the command prompt:

c:\Windows\System32\inetsrv>appcmd list vdir

But from IIS manager, I only see "View Virtual Directories" in the "Actions Pane" when I click on "Default Web Site" or a specific "Virtual Application". But when I click "View Virtual Directories" nothing shows up in the listing.

So how can I see and delete Virtual Directories from the IIS 7 Manager, when I know they are they by using the APPCMD command line tool?

Thanks,

Neal Walters

Answer 1

I agree with Matt's answer.. here's the example

C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv>appcmd.exe list vdir
VDIR "Default Web Site/" (physicalPath:%SystemDrive%\inetpub\wwwroot)
VDIR "SharePoint Central Administration v3/" (physicalPath:C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirect
ories\46455)
VDIR "SharePoint Central Administration v3/_vti_bin" (physicalPath:C:\Program Files\Common File
s\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\isapi)

You will be able to delete

VDIR "SharePoint Central Administration v3/_vti_bin"

as it's a vdir in SharePoint Central Administration v3 but you won't be able to delete

VDIR "SharePoint Central Administration v3/"

as that's the parent/root vdir.

Answer 2

With the appcmd line you listed above, you are viewing vdirs for all sites within your server. As you have discovered, IIS Manager does not have this capability - it can only view vdirs for a specific site or application.

One reason you might see vdirs listed in appcmd, but none in IIS Manager is that appcmd considers the top level site a vdir. If you have a site called www.example.com with no virtual directories, you will still see 1 virtual directory in appcmd for www.example.com. This will not show up in IIS Manager. If you have www.example2.com with a vdir under it called sample, you will see 2 vdirs listed in appcmd, but only 1 (sample) listed in IIS Manager.