Windows 2008, IIS 7.0, 64 bit Server, Terminal Services Web Application and Access Databases

This is a long list of pre-requisites, but for your information they do not work together.

1. If you have a web site that uses Access as its data storage and you migrate that site to an x64 Windows machine then access to the Access MDB file ceases with the following error: “‘Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0’ provider is not registered on the local machine”.
2. On IIS 6.0 you need to set the entire web server to 32 bit mode, but on Windows 2008/IIS 7.0 you can set each application pool to 32 or 64 bit. This is a property found under Advanced Settings for the application pool. To gain access to Access MDB files the application pool needs to run in 32 bit mode.
3. If you have TSWeb installed, then you also have installed the RPC/HTTP proxy component.
4. If you have the RPC/HTTP proxy component installed any 32 bit application pool will fail upon starting – Error 5139 for Microsoft-Windows-WAS.

So to use Access databases in a legacy web application migrated to Windows 2008, 64 bit, with TSWeb also installed either uninstall TSWeb (and RPC/HTTP proxy), or use a different server, or rewrite the web application to use SQL Express. Supposedly this will be fixed in the first service pack for Windows 2008.

There – it only took 6 hours to work that one out!