Question : IIS 6 need to run in x86 (32 bit mode) but on a Windows 2003 x64 server

Hi there,

Our development environment is a Windows 2003 x86 server but production is Windows 2003 x64 server. I've tested a webservice fine on the dev server now when I attempt to get to work on the live server I keep getting:

Could not load file or assembly 'xxxxxxxxxxx' or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format

I think this is because my solution and all projects target x86, we need to specifically do rather than Any CPU due a Crystal Reports XI 2 dependency, the dlls don't work on x64. Anyway when I deploy to the x64 production server I get these errors.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894435/en-us
tells me how to switch but I'll have to do for all IIS websites I can't do selectively so am reluctant to yet. Is there any other was I can do this short of setting up another x64 server in vmware or something and testing?

Also http://support.microsoft.com/kb/894435/en-us tells me how to switch between modes but what is the actual command to run to tell what version is currently running?

Thanks

Answer : IIS 6 need to run in x86 (32 bit mode) but on a Windows 2003 x64 server

I believe that IIS runs as 32-bit (WOW) on Windows Server 2003 x64. I don't think it's IIS causing this problem.

However, ASP.NET runs separately and you need to configure it as required in either 32-bit or 64-bit mode.

You might check this out: 32-bit DLLs go in a different place in Windows x64 and require some special commands to register them. I'm not 100% sure of how this works but that is a start!

I hope this helps!