Applicationhost.config not showing changes

Question

We have a webserver hosted in Microsoft Azure. It\'s a Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter edition, 64 bit.

For a website hosted on this machine, I need to make change

Answer 1

The real issue is that there are two inetsvr directories, one for 32 bits and another for 64 bits. The 32 bits 'version', probably dormant and not updated, is under SysWOW64 !!!

When you open a file on %SystemDrive%\Windows\System32\inetsrv using a 32bits application, Windows will redirect you, with no warning, to %SystemDrive%\Windows\SysWOW64\inetsrv possible a very obsolete file. Interesting no?

Using a 64bits editor like Notepad++ will open the 'right' active configuration file.

The following hack will make the (active) 64 bits location, accessible from 32 bits apps (for example, some Visual Studio versions).

cd /d "%SystemDrive%\Windows\SysWOW64\inetsrv"
move Config Config.OLD
mklink /d Config "%SystemDrive%\Windows\System32\inetsrv\Config"