Asphostportal IIS6 vs IIS7

Question

I have two shared accounts at asphostportal. One uses IIS 6 and one uses IIS7. On both I have websites in Classic ASP.

On the IIS 6 account, when I make an error in code and upload it then try to access that page, I get an error message that looks like this:

Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a0400'
Expected statement
/file.asp, line 2

It tells me the error code and gives a line number. I usually look at that line and figure out the problem.

With IIS 7 I upload the file and navigate to the page and I get this:

Server Error
500 - Internal server error.
There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed.

That's it. No useful information. I have no way of debugging this page without setting up IIS and MS SQL in the exact same configuration as it is on asphostportal on a local computer (this is my work computer so that's not going to happen).

I talked with someone at asphostportal. He says they are still tweaking IIS 7 configurations and can't give me an answer to why it is behaving like this.

Is there anything I can do, some kind of file I can set up (like an ASP.NET web.config file) to get the same kind of error messages on my IIS 7 account as I have on my IIS 6 account?

Answer 1

In general from a security perspective it is actually desired that error messages go to a log and do NOT get exposed to the visitor of a site.

1. It is bad form on so many levels
2. errors might contain privileged information such as database connection strings, credentials and other details a malicious visitor might abuse.

Some background here, here and on MS support