Recently, at work I was presented with an odd error. A newly imaged Virtual Machine with Windows Server 2008 R2 was showing blank pages when the customer was trying to access any HTML page. During our debug process we found that the machine showed the same source anytime we tried to access any files (images, HTML files, no extension HTML files, etc). That source is as follows:
`<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN”>
`
After much contempt of Microsoft products, we determined that the access to static content was disabled.
How to Enable Static Content feature on Windows Server 2008:
- Open Server Manager, and then expand Roles.
- Right-click Web Server (IIS), and then click Add Role Services.
- Under Web Server, click to select the “Static Content” check box.
- Click Next to complete the installation.
- Start > Run >
iisreset
After enabling it (and running iisreset) we were able to access our pages and there was much rejoicing. The original source was Microsoft KBA 2196177.