The gist of this post is: just because you installed IIS 7, it doesn't mean your ASP.Net application is going to work.  What?  That's stupid.  Everyone knows you have to enable ASP.Net.  Right?

Well, apparently not.  While work on a remote server, the install CD was not available to install IIS 7.  So... I had to depend on someone else to mount the CD, and oh, while you're at it, please install IIS 7 on the server to save me a few minutes?

To make a long story short, my working ASP.Net application was not working on the new server. After trying lots of fixes and running aspnet_regiis about five different ways, the following article brought me to my senses: Enabling ASP.Net.  The long and the short, if you are going to create an Application Server role, be sure you install ASP.Net as a subcomponent.  Doh!  (To be honest, I did not specify the ASP.Net component had to be enabled.  However, because I don't work with Server 2003 on a daily basis and had never really set one up, I didn't know that was an option.)

Why am I even blogging about this?  It just highlights that as a developer, you are not just creating and debugging an application.  You have the added complexity of knowing whether your administrator created the correct environment for your application.  In other words, you may be debugging how the server operating system is installed.  Fits right in with a previous post: Modern Project Complexity.