I am new to Windows 7 and have version Home Premium. I need to enable IIS and not sure if the blue colored checkbox means. Do I need to install IIS separately and how many of the item under IIS do I need to enable? Coming from XP there was only i choice.
I'm assuming you're in the "Turn windows features on/off" dialogue?
The coloured square means only some of the sub-items are selected. You may need to expand the Internet Information Services item and make sure the features you need are all ticked, or just tick everything (then the top-level checkbox will change to a tick instead of a solid colour).
Not sure what all of those additional options are for. With XP all you had to do was to make sure that IIS, FTP and WWW were running. IIS is shaded blue but is not in the services to enable. I am trying to install PHP and can't without it.
They're just extra features. By ticking the IIS box, you enable the basic stuff so you can host a basic site. If you need ASP.NET functionality or Windows authentication, etc., you'll need to enable those, too.
In Services, it's called "World Wide Web Publishing Service", though I think that was the same in XP. You can always try running "net start w3svc" from an admin command prompt if you're sure it's installed.
If you want php and stuff then the easiest way is to install it via microsoft's "web platform installer" app - Download the Microsoft Web Platform
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