And the ultimate answer is ... expand all the selections related to asp.net.  I had been looking at ASP.net 4.5 Advanced Services.  it was checked so I thought ASP.Net 4.5 was installed.  Looking on the control panel, it has an install date of 13 Feb 2012. (Comes with the laptop)

Also, and this is really horrible on Microsoft's part ... can't see why they did this but expanding World Wide Web services, I found .net 4.5 and 3.5 unchecked.  Even though i had selected .net 4.5 under asp.net 4.5 advanced services, clicked OK, etc.

OK, all the handlers are there now.  The problem was it looked like, from the box "ASP.net 4.5 Advanced Services" being checked that 4.5 WAS checked.  It was not.  When handlers didn't appear after selecting it, "OK'ing" my way out, etc.  I got to digging and finally expanded WWW services and found 4.5 still UNCHECKED.

No one else may have admitted this upon finding it but it's important to point out instructions could have been more plain.  Sure, the error page stated asp.net wasn't installed but on XP, if it's in Control Panel | Programs, it IS installed.  Wrong assumption for 7 and 8. :)

I hope this helps others.

Johnny,

Being a Country fan I'm pleased to see you're alive and well. :)

Thanks for validating my submission, that is, lending support.  The advice of using aspnet_regiis -i as it would be used on Windows 7 also doesn't work for asp.net 4.5 (and possibly 4.0) because these MUST be configured in IIS.

So, it is no surprise the other post contributors offered that solution.  And from an XP, Windows 7 perspective they're 100% right.  I can imagine their being perplexed at my replies that this didn't work.

It all changes with Windows 8.  I wonder why, when Visual Studio is installed and thus the latest .Net binary comes with it, why IIS 8 doesn't just get updated?  I'd imagine it is a security issue.  OK, so have a dialog pop up during VS 2010/2012 install asking if ASP.Net 4.x or whatever future version should be installed?  The end user selects "Yes" and doesn't run into these difficulties. Or, just make it part of the pre-install selection of options to update IIS with the latest .Net versions and we're good to go.

Obviously, someone installing Visual studio 2010 Pro or above KNOWS they need this so ... how about someone making the msi packages or web install packages know it also? 

But this is for a non-DNN area.

Again, thanks for getting back.  I hope others find all this info useful.

Best,

Mike