Microsoft Personal Web server

I was looking at my personal webserver setup from M$, is it any good? I am quite sure that Win98 isnt exactly a wonderful OS for servers. Has anyone else used this feature and if so how was the end result? Thanx.

I attempted to use that program, and it SUCKS! On the rare occasions that it started at all, it was unstable, and buggy as hell. Another thing I absolutely HATE about it, is the fact that it brings up its mail server program with it. I didn't look into disabling it because I was so sick of the program, but that is a HORRIBLE dafault to set. Being Microsoft, it's probably got 1,000,001 security holes in it too. And you're right, Windows 98 is among the worst options to run a web server.

My suggestion to you would to be to download Apache here. It performs great, and doesn't take squat for resources. The best part is that it can run under Linux which is also freeware, and can be installed in addition to Windows. In fact, Linux comes with Apache in the package, so you have the option to install it with the OS. They call it httpd, though (big deal). When properly configured, Linux is a far better OS to run a webserver from. I use Red Hat, and like it a lot. You can lock down a Red Hat box by installing Bastille, which you can get here.

I'm not exactly an expert on any of this, so don't take everything I say as the ultimate word from the almighty himself (but if you want to think of me as the almighty, that's fine ;) ). I'm just telling you this from my personal experience on what works and what doesn't. Who knows? Microsoft's web server program may work wonderfully for you. I wouldn't hold my breath, though.

PWS is a poor choice for a desktop Server, I would check out analogx.com's simpleserver, available at
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/network.htm
There are some other usefull tools on that page, hope this helps

Yeah, I wouldn't use an MS made server, even in Windows... IIS is full of bugs and security holes & it's supposed to be a professional web server.. just think what PWS has got wrong with it if its only a quick'n'easy solution for personal use!!

Use Apache [can be downloaded for Windows as well as Linux] or any other free web server, there's loads of them out there!

PWS is not a good product, it's buggy and difficult to install. I've had lots of trouble just getting it up and running.

As the name states, it's a personal web server, I think only 10 users can access it at the same time. What happens if you exceed that number, I don't know. Anyway, it's probably gonna give you a lot of headache using it.

That said, PWS can be used for one thing: Launching active server pages(ASP) in the development phase. If you are a web-programmer it might come in handy, but internet information server(IIS) shipped with win2000 and XPpro is the better choice.

But if you just want a regulart server showing static web pages or you want to look into personal home page tools(PHP, an excellent alternative to ASP), you should use Apache.