When debugging ISAPI applications, ISAPI filters, server components, or other code you are writing to run on top of IIS or PWS on Windows NT, it is sometimes convenient to run IIS as a process. This allows you to start inetinfo.exe from the command line or from inside your development tools, instead of managing it as an NT service, as happens by default.
Included in the IIS documentation is a page describing in detail how to run IIS as a process. To view this page, bring up the Product Documentation from the Start menu. Then in the tree control on the left side, open the following path:
Microsoft Internet Information Server
Advanced Web Application Development
Debugging Your Application
Establishing a Debug Environment
The steps are described toward the bottom of this documentation page.
Since making all the registry changes (steps 2 through 5 in the documentation page mentioned above) is tedious, we have included here two .reg files that automate these steps, both for switching from service to process, and back.
You must still manually make the usrmgr changes described in step 1 of the page mentioned above. That is, use the User Manager for Domains administration tool (USRMGR) to add the Log on as Service, Act as part of the operating system and Generate security audits rights on the local computer to the NT account you will use when debugging. This only needs to be done once.
In this directory are two .reg files:
IISProcess.reg -- use to switch IIS to run as a process
IISService.reg -- use to switch IIS back to running as a service
NOTE: These reg files assume that IIS is installed in the standard location, i.e. "c:\winnt\system32\inetsrv\inetinfo.exe". If that is not the case, modify the .reg files appropriately before using them.
