How to run 32-bit ASP.NET Applications on 64-bit Windows server

In my workstation I have used 32bit PC. There is no problem every this is working nice. But an unexpected situation arise recently when I try to deploy my application in to a 64 bit windows server. I never face this problem before.

Don't worry Technet library(Microsoft) is there. Just one line need to execute to solve my problem.

Actually I need to configure IIS to run 32-bit ASP.NET Applications on 64-bit Windows server.For this, we must configure IIS to create 32-bit worker processes. For more information about running 32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows.

IIS cannot run 32-bit and 64-bit applications concurrently on the same server.To enable IIS 6.0 to run 32-bit ASP.NET applications on 64-bit Windows.

Follow this steps:

1.Open a command prompt and navigate to the %systemdrive%\Inetpub\AdminScripts directory.

2.Type the following command:
cscript.exe adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32BitAppOnWin64 true

3.Press ENTER.

Now your 64 bit server is ready for run 32 bit application.

Some Important information

Before you configure IIS to run 32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows, note the following:

1.IIS only supports 32-bit worker processes in Worker Process Isolation mode on 64-bit Windows.

2.On 64-bit Windows, the World Wide Web Publishing service can run 32-bit and 64-bit worker processes. Other IIS services like the IIS Admin service, the SMTP service, the NNTP service, and the FTP service run 64-bit processes only.

3.On 64-bit Windows, the World Wide Web Publishing service does not support running 32-bit and 64-bit worker processes concurrently on the same server.

After configure problem may occurs

After you configure IIS 6.0 to run 32-bit Web applications, IIS stores 32-bit DLLs and ISAPIs in the %windir%\syswow64\inetsrv directory. All other IIS files, including the MetaBase.xml file, are stored in the %windir%\system32\inetsrv directory.

File access to the System32 and sub directories are transparently redirected based on the bitness of the process making that file access (64-bit processes have full access, while 32-bit processes have access to System32 redirected to Syswow64).

If your legacy applications have specific 32-bit file access needs and you notice application failures, see if the application needs to reference the new %windir%\syswow64\inetsrv to resolve the problem.

For more information visits here.