I had to install IIS one my work machine today, and for the life of me just could not get it to work.
It should not be that hard, just activate the feature in the Control Panel’s Turn Windows features on or off program. Buuut I kept getting an error. I don’t have the exact number on me, but it was due to missing .NET instillations, and ancient ones. I also could not install those.
After umpteen hours, I finally stumbled upon this stackoverflow question.
And lo and behold, just adding the custerr\en-US directory in C:\inetpub\ fixed the issue.
But HOW?!??! HOW, considering it creates a bunch of other directories itself? It’s just that it needs inetpub/custerr/en-US. Legit it’s so strange.
The only thing I can think of is that there was a security update a few months ago
(article here)
that added the inetpub folder.
I’m guessing that if the inetpub folder exists, the IIS installer assumes the other folders are just there, and crashes. Although, it would be, ya know, nice if it gave a useful error that was actually related, cause it was most certainly NOT an issue with .NET.