Installing the ASP to ASP.NET Migration Assistant on Windows Vista

Note: The ASP to ASP.NET Migration tool was designed when ASP.NET v1.0 was just out and it does most of the conversion related to the then model.  Also, there are a few known issues and it doesn't do a near to perfect conversion.  If you are starting with ASP.NET development, the latest version is ASP.NET 3.5 which is a part of Visual Studio 2008 and I believe it provides conversion from classic ASP as well.  

As a part of the upcoming Virtual Tech Days, I am trying to demonstrate on migrating from ASP to ASP.NET for all the world who is still left out with our ASP Days and currently working with similar scripting languages like PHP.

Interestingly, when we talked to those developers, the last update they have is that there has been something called ASP.NET which is version of ASP that runs on the .NET Platform.  Much less is known about the different versions we have released and the tons of enhancements it provides for web development, be it enterprise, commercial or hobbyist.

When I tried installing the Migration Assistant on Windows Vista, the installer fails after a few attempts.  I could sense the issue must be with the elevated privileges Vista requires for running executables.  I tried right clicking on the MSI installer to “Run as Administrator” but had less success.

After a little bit of research, I found that I had to verify couple of things.

1. ASP is enabled (checked) in the IIS under Application Development Features.  To do that

    i. Run “appwiz.cpl” from run command to open up “Add Remove Programs”

    ii. Click on “Turn Windows features On or Off” on the left of the “Add Remove Programs” window.  It is listed under “Tasks”

   iii. Click “Continue” to provide elevated privileges

   iv. Expand “Internet Information Services”

    v. Expand “World Wide Web Services”.  Make sure “Web Management Tools” is checked

    vi. Make sure “Application Development Features” is checked

    vii. Expand “Application Development Features” and check “ASP”

   vii.  Note that you also need to enable other things such as ASP.NET, .NET Extensibility as appropriate although not required for this.

  vii.  Click “Ok”

2. Once this is done, you can download the MSI from http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/7/8/0780e532-8d77-4834-9a8e-fd428fbdde63/Setup.msi

3. Don’t Click on “Run” when the above opens up the dialog.  Instead chose “Save” and save it to the Desktop

4. Click on “Start” (Windows Vista Start is the Window Icon) and type cmd

5. cmd.exe shows up in the suggestion

6. Right Click on cmd.exe and select “Run as Administrator”

7. Select “Continue” and thereafter the cmd prompt opens up.

8. Typically the Command prompt path is defaulted to “C:\users\<username>”

9. Type cd desktop to navigate to the desktop path

10. Type “setup.msi” to execute the MSI and follow the instructions to complete the installation.

After installation, you can follow the migration assistant help screen to start using it.

Cheers !!!