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Installing & Uninstalling Port80 Software Products
At Port80 Software, we want your evaluation and testing to go as smooth as possible.
Sometimes, the biggest hurdle is to make sure that your Web server is compatible with Port80 Software tools and that your installation is successful. This page is designed to help cover the basic issues we have seen with thousands of Web servers and our software. As always, Port80 Software Support is also here to help you directly.
Steps to a Successful Installation
- Get the latest Port80 code. Confirm that you have the very latest version of your tool by reviewing our patches page, signing into My Port80, or downloading an installer from the corresponding product page (pick a tool, then follow the Try links).
- Check your platform. You need to be on a 32 bit version of Windows that has IIS 4, 5 or 6. Confirm that you are not running Windows Vista, 64 bit, or in IIS 5 Isolation Mode on Windows Server 2003/IIS 6 deployments, as our tools are not yet optimized for these environments. Full support will come to these platforms as soon as possible, with 64 bit code expected to be released in the near future.
- Right permissions? Check that your user login account has full Administrator privileges before installing. Our software also assumes that you have not modified the default permissions for IIS-related user account contexts like IUSR_, IWAM_, and IIS_WPG. Here are links to IIS 5 and IIS 6 permissions basics...
- Close IIS. Make sure that the Internet Services Manager (ISM) is closed before installing. If it is open, this could keep IIS from accepting your new Port80 Software install.
- Stop IIS. We recommended that you stop the IIS service before installing the software as the Port80 installer will attempt this automatically and if IIS fails to stop gracefully, the software will not be installed properly in IIS. This can be done on the command line by typing net stop w3svc to stop the World Wide Web Publishing Service (then net start w3svc to make sure that the service has restarted after install). You also can confirm that the World Wide Web Publishing service is stopped (or, after install, started) by typing iisreset /status. If for any reason the World Wide Web Publishing service fails to stop, you can try typing net stop iisadmin /y to stop all IIS-related services (including FTP, NNTP and SMTP, as well as the IIS Admin service). Finally, but only if all else fails, type iisreset /stop to do a hard stop of IIS.
- Use Port80’s InstallCheck tool to clean up previous installs. If the software was previously installed on the machine, please run the free InstallCheck utility (see below for more details) prior to attempting reinstallation to make certain that all old program elements (especially DLLs, registry and metabase keys) were successfully removed. This is best accomplished with IIS closed and stopped.
- Confirm your installation before testing. After installing the software, please run the free InstallCheck utility again to ensure that all components were installed successfully, and that the Filter Status indicates a green arrow pointing up, rather than missing or with a red arrow pointing down. If any component has a red X next to it or the filter status is not green, then you will need to fully uninstall with InstallCheck and then re-install following the steps above (there is only one exception to this rule: in the case of ZipEnable, the "metabase" entry will appear uninstalled until and unless the advanced Browser Compatibility or CPU Roll-Off features have been enabled, which will insert the correct entry for this element into the metabase and then show as installed in InstallCheck).
Troubleshooting Installation Problems
- Slow connections or Remote Desktop/RDP/Terminal Service installs? When installing over Terminal Services (especially if the connection is slow), or when there are a large number of Web sites configured on the server (30 or more), it is advisable to shut down the W3SVC service manually before beginning the installation, rather than relying on the installer to do so. This reduces the time spent waiting for the installer to stop the service, and thus the chances of something going wrong.
- Stop auto-recovery processes during your install. If your Web Publishing Service (W3SVC) is configured to restart automatically when it shuts down, disable this recovery mechanism before installing your Port80 Software product. The automatic restart is usually set up in the Recovery tab of the Service Properties dialog (services.msc). Some administrators also use SNMP traps for this purpose.
- Filter loaded in IIS? Immediately after installation, make at least one HTTP request against a site on the server, and then check the filter status in the ISAPI Filters tab of the WWW Master Properties page in the ISM. Following a successful installation, the product name should be listed among the loaded ISAPI filters, with a filter priority of High, Medium or Low (depending on the product) and a status indicator of green-arrow-up. If the product is not listed, or if its priority is listed as Unknown, or if the status indicator is red-arrow-down, then the installation was unsuccessful. Stop IIS, use the free InstallCheck utility to remove your bad installation, then try again with the step above.
- Third party filters and extensions to IIS? We test for compatibility against all of our own shipping products, plus major server-side programming environments commonly used with IIS, such as classic ASP, ASP.NET, Cold Fusion, PHP, JSP environments like Jrun, and ActiveState Perl. However, some third-party processes, when present in IIS, can cause installation or interoperability issues in certain scenarios. These issues can usually can be configured around, but you should be aware of the possible conflicts if you are running third-party URL rewriters, Java platforms such as BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, Tomcat or any other application server or program that modifies requests or responses with an ISAPI filter or extension DLL. If you have such software installed and are seeing issues with a Port80 tool that is installed correctly, try disabling the third party filter. Still getting the error? If so, please contact Port80 Software Support, and we will work to code a solution for you.
- Try a few requests to the site after install. It is advisable to make several requests against the Web server and then recheck the filter status to be sure that the filter is loaded correctly and behaving normally.
- InstallChecked? If the filter is present in the ISAPI filters tab with the correct status and priority but the product is still not working, use the free InstallCheck utility (see below for more details) to check whether the other program elements were installed correctly.
- Filter load ordering OK? If the product is correctly listed in the ISAPI Filters tab, but you suspect there may be a problem with the ISAPI filter load order (for example, because another ISAPI filter known to have been present has disappeared), you can run Microsoft's Metabase Editor (for IIS 6) or MetaEdit 2.2 (for IIS 5) to examine the IIS metabase directly. Using the Metabase Editor (or MetaEdit), navigate to the LM/W3SVC/Filters key and check the FilterLoadOrder entry. It should contain a comma-separated list of all the ISAPI filters known to be loaded on the machine at the service (global) level, including the Port80 Software product that has just been installed. Filters should be separated by no more than one comma and there should not be any extra commas or any spaces in the list.
Uninstalling Port80 Filters and Getting More Help
If any problems are encountered during or immediately after installation, take the following steps to gather information that will help Port80’s Support team to ID and fix the problem quickly for you, free of charge:
- Make note of any warning (yellow) or error (red) messages that have appeared in the Event Viewer (both Application and System logs) since the first attempted installation of the Port80 product, that mention any ISAPI DLL, inetinfo.exe, w3wp.exe, W3SVC or IISADMIN.
- Save the install.log file from the product's installation path (by default this will be C:\Program Files\Port80\ProductName).
- Stop IIS (see above) and then uninstall the software using the uninstall shortcut in the Port80 group in the Windows Start menu (Start/Programs/Port80/ProductName), or in the or in the Windows Add/Remove Programs dialog.
- Run the free InstallCheck utility (see below) to verify that the uninstallation was completed normally and to remove any remaining program elements.
- Once InstallCheck shows a clean uninstallation, you can reattempt installation using the original installer.
- If your second installation attempt also fails, please submit a tech support request. Be as detailed as possible in your description of both the IIS environment (e.g. non-default IIS configuration settings, server-side programming environments, third-party ISAPI filters or extensions, reverse proxies, etc.) and of the incident itself (in particular the steps that had been taken when the issue occurred, and/or the steps required to reproduce it). Also be sure to mention that you have already gone through the steps outlined above...
How to Use InstallCheck
InstallCheck is a free utility designed by Port80 to help troubleshoot Port80 Software product installations on Microsoft IIS Web servers. The tool will work for all Port80 products except ServerDefender AI and the w3compiler. Download InstallCheck and follow these steps to quickly verify that all program elements were successfully installed, or to check that no program elements were missed during uninstallation, and to remove any that remain:
- Run InstallCheck.exe on the server.
- Select the appropriate Port80 Software product from the list in the left pane.
- Click "Search".
- Program elements are listed in the right pane.
- Program elements that are present have a small eyeglasses icon beside them.
- Program elements that are absent have a red X beside them.
- To remove a program element, highlight it and click "Remove."
- To remove all program elements, click "Remove All."
- Note: The runtime component of most Port80 Software server tools is an ISAPI filter DLL. The W3SVC service must be shut down before such files can be removed. If this file was not uninstalled normally, you will have to shut down the service manually before InstallCheck can remove it.
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