This is a general appeal to some of the big guns to investigate (like you don't have anything else to do).  I have been sifting the forum for some install issues and I think there is something strange happening between WS 2003/IIS6 and 4.02.  I was ready to write my problems off to the move from 2000/IIS5 and DNN 2.x to the current but I'm starting to believe there is something flaky happening here and I think lots of others are running into it as well.  The problem seems to manifests itself a little differently based on the environment.

I have installed from the begining a couple times now and each time had a wonderful experience.  Version 4 is truely a wonderful thing.  Then I try to go "live" with it and something gets broken.  I have read a number of people having similar frustrations.  For me I am trying to have both my old and new sites running on the same server at the same time.  I had third party stuff in my version 2 so I need to transfer content manually.  No big deal.  The fact that I have successfully setup the new site twice and it behaves perfectly until I cut both sites over to the live domain makes me think there is something flaky in IIS6.

I have separate application pools and feel I have a good handle on access/permissions etc.  But once this thing goes bad...I just can't get it back.  I know the ASP 1.1 vs 2.0 setup in IIS.  I get everything from configuation errors to "page currently unavailable".  It is consistent...I get it in the IIS Snap-in, the local browser, and network browsers.  I know, being a developer, this is very difficult to troubleshoot without being able to reproduce. I just don't have the tech-no savy to track it down.  I would love to work with someone who knows the 20 questions to ask me to get to the bottom of it.

My theory is it is related to web subfolders(and/or Subdomains), Ver 4.02, IIS6 and maybe the database.  I suspect the reason I can't get it back is a database setting.  In version 2.x I used to tweak the "portals" table in the database to update the inbound HTTP addresses.  I know that moved somewhere and I don't know where.  I found it in the interface (which was cool) but don't know how to check it if you can't get into the site.  Other side effects I have documented in my other posts. I just remembered I have backups prior to the cutover so I will test the backups and see if I can bring it back from there.

I still can't say enough what an amazing thing DNN is.  When it works it is just the sweetest thing!  If I need to I will bite the bullit and move everything over to 4.02 and do a hard cutover, but I really think this is something simple and stupid.  If I can figure it out I can even help out some of the other newbies that seem to have similar problems.

So help me Obie-one ("Core Team" ) you're my only hope.

Thanks,

Jeff

Thanks for the tip on the Portalalias table.  It did not correct the problem but it is nice to know where that stuff is.

Here is an interesting issue:  In IIS 6 I am running DNN 2.X and DNN 4.02 under subfolders of the "Default Web Site".  If I set the default home directory on the root "Default Web site" to DNN2 I get configuation erros on the DNN4 site.  If I point the home root directory at the DNN4 folder I get configuration errors on the DNN2 site.  It seems that the root home directory kills the application pool separation on the Web.config file.  If I set the root at the C:\Inetpub\wwwroot both subfolders work perfectly.  Hmmmmmmmm.  Could this be a bug/feature of IIS 6?

I have not been able to get the DNN 4.02 to function as a subdomain (test.mydomain.com).

Jeff

Yes, I have separate application pools for each. I have tested with ASP.NET 1.1 on the DNN 2.X site and ASP 2.0 on the DNN 4.02 site.  What I have found is ASP 2.0 seems to be backward compatable.  No confirmation, but I get the same behaviors weather I have the DNN 2 site running under either version of ASP (I think that is a good thing).  Most common error is:

Server Error in '/DotNetNuke4' Application.: Section or group name 'data' is already defined. Updates to this may only occur at the configuration level where it is defined.

Very similar error on the DNN 2 side if I point the "Default Web Site" home directory at the DNN 4 and run DNN 2 as a subfolder of that.  Trys to define "data" and can't from the DNN 2 web.config. Hope this all makes sense.  I think this is just one of those "you can't do that" things.  It just seems like it should work.  Seems more like a bug in IIS6 rather than DNN.

At this point I am abandoning the effort of having both sites online at the same time.  We are transfering over the content from the production server and will just do a hard cutover from DNN 2 to DNN 4 as soon as that is done (doctor: it hurts when I do that...then don't do that). 

Having some minor issues in 4.02 with pages and frames moving around in the menu but I think I can work through those.  I really like all the new feature.