Hi -
I can't believe that I have played around with different programming languages before and never heard about ASP. I have started doing some reading on it and it seems really exciting. I have a problem, however. I am using a Laptop that runs the Windows XP Home Edition operating system. However, it does not seems to be ASP-ready, so I cannot practise writing ASP scripts. Can anyone tell me how to get my computer configured so that I can do some practising?


Thanks much.
Taffy

Win XP Home Edition doesn't ship with a web server, so you will need to instal one to start playing around with asp. By all acounts, IIS (M$ web server) doesn't play with XP Home Edition, but there is a viable (and free!) alternative in APACHE. Visit the apache site do get information on and download apache.

APACHE is not the same thing as IIS. If you want to truely code ASP you need Windows 2000 or Windows XP Pro with IIS 6.0.

You can try Abyss. It's a small webserver and supports perl, php and asp. More info http://www.aprelium.com/abyssws/

Still the only thing that you can fully run ASP is IIS. All th other programs work, but will not support many features of ASP like IIS.

ASP is a Microsoft langauge, trying to use something else will not work. Trust me, i have been using it for years and have tryed just about everything.

I agree, if you want to fully use the capabilities of ASP you should go for IIS. The way I see it is that is easier for you to upgrade XP Home to Professional instead of installing another web server on Home at the moment.
HTH :p

BTW those "hacks" for XP Home to get IIS to work don't work. Ive tryed on multiple computers without success.

All it did was mess it up if you tryed to upgrade to XP Pro (meaning that if you tryed the hack and did a upgrade, IIS would not work. Have to reinstall XP completly).

The best option I can tell you is to try a free ASP host. I have found that the developer site http://developer.graphyx.net they offer a certain number of free ASP accounts and even allow up to three ODBC's.

IIS/PWS is on the Win 2000 CD. You just have to install it. If you have the Win2K CD, load it your laptop and install the IIS / PWS. If you don't have it, ask a copy w/ your friends. I just installed IIS in my cousin's Dell notebook.

Dexter

I have one of my PC's setup for testing that has Abyss and the ASP Component for Abyss installed. So far I have been using it for the last year and have yet to experience any problems running any ASP applications on it.

I recommend Abyss as an alternative to IIS.