I recently installed an IIS 4.0 server. During the configuration, I discovered that the log-file listings weren't present. In other words, I was unable to set up logging because no options appeared in the log-file list. How can I force IIS to show the log files so that I can set up the server?
IIS usually displays all possible log-file formats (i.e., Microsoft IIS Log File Format, National Center for Supercomputing Applications—NCSA—Common Log File Format, World Wide Web Consortium—W3C—Extended Log File Format, and ODBC Logging) on the Web Site tab of a Web site's Properties dialog box, as Figure 1 shows. Often, new administrators think that the logging option is missing because they haven't clicked the down arrow to see all the choices in the Active log format list. However, some or all of the logging entries could also be missing.
You must register certain objects with the OS to make them accessible to the programs that need them. COM objects provide IIS with its ability to log Internet services activity. Therefore, registering the COM objects will probably enable logging for your server. You rarely need to register objects manually, but the need sometimes arises when you install additions or hotfixes or troubleshoot the system.
To fill in an empty logging list, stop IIS, then open a command-prompt window. Change to the \<%systemroot%> \system32\inetsrv directory. Type
regsvr32 iislog.dll regsvr32 iscomlog.dll regsvr32 logui.ocx
at the command prompt, then reboot the server.
