IIS Hangs When Querying a FoxPro Database w/ ASP or IDC/HTX

• Microsoft Internet Information Server versions 2.0 and 3.0

SYMPTOMS

When you query a FoxPro database using Active Server Pages (ASP) or the Internet Database Connector (IDC/HTX), the Internet Information Server (IIS) appears to hang, and the web browser appears not to respond to the web site. The web browsers' status bar would read as follows:

   Web site found. Waiting for reply...

CAUSE

This behavior by the IIS server is caused by incorrect permissions being granted to the IUSR_machine-name account. The Visual FoxPro ODBC database driver will try to create *.tmp in the \Winnt\System32 directory. Because the IUSR_machine-name account does not have the Write and Delete permissions to that \Winnt\System32, the process will fail causing the IIS server to no longer respond.

RESOLUTION

There are two possible solutions to this problem.

Option 1

Grant your anonymous user (IUSR_machine-name by default) or the authenticated Windows NT user account the following permissions to the these directories:

When you apply these permissions, only apply them to all existing files, unless otherwise noted. Please be aware that where the IUSR account is noted you would need to add all user accounts that will be authenticated on the IIS server.

1. Grant IUSR Read permission to the Root directory of the drive that ASP is installed on.

2. Grant IUSR Write permission to the Windows NT directory.

3. Grant IUSR Read permission to the System32 directory.

4. Grant IUSR Read permission to the Inetserv directory.

5. Grant IUSR Read permission to the InetPub (or content directory) By default, the next two directories are located in Program Files, Common Files, System and are only needed for ASP/ADO queries.

6. Grant IUSR Read permission to the OLE DB directory.

7. Grant IUSR Read permission to the ADO directory.

8. Grant IUSR Change permissions to the Database file and directory.

Option 2

FoxPro uses the System's TEMP and TMP environment variables to specify the location of temporary files created during FoxPro operations. By default these environment variables are defined for users and are not system wide settings. To set these environment variables for the System, do the following:

1. Right-click My Computer.

2. Choose Properties and select the Environment tab.

3. Click an entry in the System Variables List box (the one on top).

4. In the Variable and Value Edit control, type the following:

   Variable = TEMP Value = C:\Temp

5. Click the Set button. You will now see TEMP has been added to the list of system variables. Repeat the process for the TMP variable.

6. Log off and restart the computer.

7. Grant IUSR Read permission to the System32 directory.

   NOTE: Because the FoxPro driver no longer needs to create TEMP files in the System32 directory, the IUSR account should only have Read permissions to that directory.)

Keywords          : iisodbc kberrmsg kbprb
Version           : 2.00 3.00
Platform          : winnt
Hardware          : ALPHA x86
Issue type        : kbprb