Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Manager for Windows XP

If you are running an IIS (Internet Information Server) on your computer and if it is not the IIS 6.0 then you are propably having problem to connect to an other IIS servers which are IIS 6.0 running on Windows 2003 servers on your LAN.

In my company I'm running a number of IIS servers some of whose are version 5.1 and some are 6.0. And time to time I have to connect to those web servers in order to diagnose or troubleshoot problems or to do regular management tasks on those web servers.

Since I'm running an Windows XP Edition SP2 as my laptop I can not connect to Web Servers of IIS 6.0 from my IIS Management Console because of the version conflict between 5.1 installed on my computer and the 6.0 installed on the Web Server. So I had to logon remotely to the Web Server using Remote Desktop Connection.

Trying to connect to a remote IIS 6.0 from IIS 5.1 management console results with the following warning message :

Remote administration of IIS 6.0 from IIS 5.1 is not supported. Please upgrade to IIS 6.0 Administration Pack.

Connecting to the Web Server just for tasks that can be done by using an Internet Information Server Management Console is a little bit more work than the job requires.

I have just discovered a tool for connecting IIS 6.0 Web Servers using just the IIS Management Console from an XP computer. This tool is Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Manager for Windows XP. You can download this tool from Microsoft Downloads site. Installation of the IIS 6.0 Manager for Windows XP ends after a few minutes. You can find the program shortcut for the IIS 6.0 Manager in the Administrative Tools program group.

You can now use this tool either to connect to a web server running IIS 6.0 over it or to an IIS 5.1.

You can download the tool IIS 6.0 Manager for Windows XP from Microsoft Downloads site at page Microsoft IIS 6.0 Manager download link.