The Case of the missing ASP.NET tab in IIS

We recently had a problem on our development build server that had us puzzled.  The ASP.NET tab disappeared and our CruiseControl.NET server quit working.  We had seen the problem with CruiseControl.NET before - a serialization error on DateTime - and we knew it was related to running the dashboard in the wrong version of ASP.NET.  So the two issues seemed to be related.

I finally came across a blog post today that named the cause of the issue and a fix that worked so I thought I would help spread the word in case anyone else comes across this annoying problem.

Monish Nagisetty's Blog - VMWare Server - Missing ASP.NET tab in IIS

It appears to be related to installing VMWare Server (which we had done the day before the problem).  Even though we had since uninstalled VMWare Server, the problem continued after the uninstall.

Hopefully this nugget will help another poor soul. :)

Jonathan Cogley is the CEO and founder of Thycotic Software, a .NET consulting company and ISV in Washington DC.  Our product, Secret Server is a enterprise password manager system for teams to secure their passwords.  Are you still putting your passwords into Excel?