John Mee - Some programmer in Sydney

Problem

Getting a 500 error from IIS 5.1 on Windows XP whilst trying to run from various document roots.

The server was unable to logon the Windows NT account ‘STSSERVERAdministrator’ due to the following error: Logon failure: user account restriction. Possible reasons are blank passwords not allowed, logon hour restrictions, or a policy restriction has been enforced. The data is the error code.
For additional information specific to this message please visit the Microsoft Online Support site located at: http://www.microsoft.com/contentredirect.asp.

Solution

IIS is configured with the wrong user. Change it to the “IUSR_” user.

1. Open up the IIS Manager
2. right-click properties
3. “directory security” tab
4. edit
5. check “anonymous access”
6. click browse
7. “advanced”
8. “find now”
9. select the user starting with “IUSR_”
10. ok (x3) to get out
11. “Apply”

My problem was probably that I changed the machine name somewhere along the way. It didn’t carry the new user over and when I first looked at this screen I just picked the Administrator. Wrong choice.

I can recommend the program “XP PRO IIS Admin” for getting IIS to work with more than one site. Getting a bit old, but still works. It won’t make it serve multiple sites simultaneously, bit it does make it dead easy to switch the running site. Great for development.