MIDAS Knowledge Base

How to enable IIS on Windows

In addition to our cloud hosted version of our MIDAS room booking software, we also offer a downloadable version which may be run on your own server.

Did you know Windows comes with a built-in web server?

Windows IIS (Internet Information Services) server is disabled by default, but may be enabled by following the steps below.

Looking for an alternative web server for Windows? Try Apache instead

Step 1 - Open Windows Features

Click the Start button and begin typing "windows features" until the "Turn Windows features on or off" option appears, and select it:

Step 2 - Select features

Scroll down and tick the "Internet Information Services" option:

Install Internet Information Services (IIS)

Expand the feature by clicking the small "+" to the left of the box you just selected.

Further expand the "World Wide Web Services" and then the "Application Development Features" sub menus, and tick the "CGI" option:

Enable CGI for Internet Information Services (IIS)

If you don't select the CGI option, then when you come to configure IIS for Perl you may receive errors about required modules not being in the module list.

Step 3 - Apply Changes

Click OK, and a progress dialog will appear whilst Windows enables the features you've selected:

Step 4 - Provisioning Complete

Once provisioning of the selected features is complete, the dialog will show:

Now IIS has been enabled, you'll now need to start it...

Step 5 - Start IIS

Press your Windows key + R (or Start Menu → Run) to open the Run dialog.

In the Run dialog type "inetmgr" and press Enter/Click OK.

In the Internet Information Services (ISS) Manager window, select the "Default Web Site" from the left panel, and then click "Start" under the "Manage Website" actions in the right panel: