How to Install IIS on Windows 8 or Windows 10

July 7th, 2014

One of the first things Web Developers using ASP.NET will want to install on Windows 8 is IIS (Internet Information Services). Windows 8 and Windows 10 ships with a new version of IIS, version 8, lets take a look at installing it.

Note: Windows 10 installs IIS version 10 instead of version 8, for obvious reasons. It’s the same exact process either way.

Installing IIS

Keeping with Microsoft modular design of, uhm, everything these days, IIS in Windows is still an optional “Windows Feature”. To install it, press the Windows + R key combination to bring up a run box, then type appwiz.cpl and press enter.

This will open the Program and Features part of Control Panel, on the left hand side click on the “Turn Windows features on or off” link.

Now click on the Internet Information Services check box.

If you’re a developer you are going to want to expand it and explore the sub-components as well. By default it installs all the stuff needed to host a website, and you are probably going to need some of the more developer centric components as well.

After clicking OK, this dialog will appear on your screen for a while.

When its done, fire up your browser and navigate to localhost.

That’s all there is to it.