Installing IIS7.5 on XP-Home

Until today IIS wasn't an option for low-cost OEM XP versions: finally, long time after XP went out of production, Microsoft recognised that about 40% of computers around the world are still using the old trusty XP home and released an IIS version for it, called Internet Information Server Express.
Nice thing is that it works on almost any Windows version around, including the tiny XP FLP (for Legacy PCs) that is an ideal platform to make Virtual Machines (like the one we will use here).

Making a server out of XPH

To install on XP-Home you can't use the original OEM CD as you would do on XP Professional or XP Corporate but you'll need the following:

In our example we will use XP FLP on a virtual machine. It is mandatory to update Windows before to attempt the installation.
All you have to do is to download the installer and run it. The whole process takes only few seconds to complete.

Going further

To build a complete development system you may want to add:

This step is not as simple as it was the previous one.
In pure Microsoft-style you may hit the rubber-wall of cross-dependencies that will make you in turn download plenty of additional packages and possibly restart your computer several times as you install updates.
At the end you may also need Microsoft FixIt