Getting Virtual Server 2005 to work on Windows Vista

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Recently I tried running Virtual Server 2005 R2 on Vista Ultimate edition, the program installed ok but I was unable to start the Virtual Server Administration site . It prompted me Open or Save vswebapp.exe

In order to fix the same you need to do the following:

· Add IIS features on an existing Windows Vista OS

· Add an IIS handler mapping so it will treat EXE files as CGI

Add IIS features on an existing Windows Vista OS:

IIS is not installed by default when installing Windows Vista, so in most cases you will need to add several IIS features before being able to install Virtual Server 2005 on Windows Vista. I used the following steps to add IIS to my Windows Vista system that is running the Ultimate edition:

1. Go to the Programs and Features control panel. I typically do this by pressing the Windows key + R and typing appwiz.cpl in the run dialog

2. Click the Turn Windows features on or off link in the Tasks list on the left side of the Programs and Features control panel, and click Continue to launch with administrator privileges

3. In the Windows Features dialog, locate the item named Internet Information Services in the feature tree. Check the root node to enable the default set of IIS features

4. Expand the root node and check the following child nodes that do not end up getting checked by default (this is the list of items that I checked, but I don't know for sure if all of them are necessary in order to use Virtual Server 2005): all of the IIS 6 management tools under the Web Management Tools node, all of the features in the Application Development Features, Common Http Features and Security nodes under the World Wide Web Services node

5. Click OK to add all of the IIS features that you selected in the previous 2 steps

6. Reboot after IIS feature installation completes

Add an IIS handler mapping so it will treat EXE files as CGI:

After adding IIS features to your Windows Vista system and installing Virtual Server 2005, you will need to configure a new handler mapping for the VirtualServer web site. To do this, I used the following steps (there may be other ways of doing this, but this is the way I found that worked for me):

1. Go to the Windows start menu, choose All Programs, then Administrative Tools, then Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager

2. Click Continue to launch the IIS Manager application with administrator privileges

3. In the Connections tree control on the left side of the IIS Manager UI, expand Web Sites, then expand Default Web Site, find the VirtualServer web site and click on it

4. In the main pane, you should see /VirtualServer Home. Select Group by area if it is not currently selected in the Group by drop down. Then find the IIS settings section and double-click on the item named Handler Mappings

5. In the Handler Mappings pane, right-click and select Add Module Mapping...

6. In the Request path text box, enter *.exe

7. In the Module drop-down, select CgiModule. If you do not see CgiModule listed in this drop-down, you will need to go back to the control panel and make sure that you add the CGI feature to IIS (located under Internet Information Services | World Wide Web Services | Application Development Features | CGI in the Windows Features control panel), then try these steps again

8. In the Name text box, provide a friendly name for the module mapping. I used EXE-to-CGI, but it doesn't matter what you type here

9. Click OK to add the module mapping to the VirtualServer web site

10. In the Connections tree control on the left side of the IIS Manager UI, expand Web Sites, then right-click on the Default Web Site and choose Restart to make sure that the changes made above will take effect

These steps were enough for the issue I was facing. These were originally provided by Aaron Stebner here. Please refer to this post in if you require additional help.