IIS Answers -Upgrading to IIS 5 -Installing IIS 5 to a Custom Location

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Upgrading to IIS 5
Installing IIS 5 to a Custom Location
by Brett Hill

If you, like many other admins find themselves with an IIS 5 server installed on drives/volumes that you'd really rather not use, you can do an unattended install of only IIS.

First, uninstall IIS 5. You can do this simply through the Control Panel, add/remove software, windows components option.

Next, create an answer file for just the IIS component. In this case the file is iis5install.txt (see sample below):

[Components]
iis_common = on
iis_inetmgr = on
iis_www = on
iis_ftp = on
iis_htmla = on

[InternetServer]
PathFTPRoot="E:\InetPub\FTPRoot"
PathWWWRoot="E:\InetPub\wwwroot"

The next step will be to fire off the component installation using the following command line:

sysocmgr/i:%windir%\inf\sysoc.inf /u:c:\iis5install.txt

I hate to say this, but I do actually get questions about why the above line doesn't work.
Substitute the installation path for your OS, usually C:\winnt for %windir% and the actual location and name of your install file for c:\iis5install.txt.

This will install the Inetpub folder it's contents to E:\Inetpub. There are more options in the sample answer file.

Be sure to have your Service Pack CD's handy when you do this if you've applied one to your installation. You will be prompted for the Service Pack files.

Note: You cannot relocate the IIS binary files from C:\ using this or any other method I know about.

Note: Before reinstalling IIS, delete the registry keys HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Hotfix. This will permit the Hotfix checking tool to correctly identify that your server has no hotfixes installed (after reinstallation).

Proceed to apply hotfixes and updates as required.