Not too long ago, when I selected the Add/Remove Windows Components option
in the Control Panel Add or Remove Programs applet on my Windows Server 2003
machine, the Windows Components Wizard took a long time to appear or hung completely.
When this problem occurred, the Event Viewer system log stated that Microsoft
IIS had configuration problems with the metabase.xml file.
I haven't determined what causes the corruption of metabase.xml, but I have
figured out how to make the Windows Components Wizard appear immediately when
I select the Add/Remove Windows Components option. If you have to wait around
for your Windows Components Wizard to appear, follow these steps:
- Stop the IIS Admin Service. (By default, it won't start when the metabase.xml
file is corrupted.)
- Go to the C:\windows\systems32\inetsrv directory, rename the mbschema.xml
and metabase.xml files to mbschema.old and metabase.old, respectively.
- Go to the C:\windows\system32\inetsrv\history directory and find the latest
timestamp for two files: MBSchema_0000000xxx_000000000 0.xml and Metabase_0000000xxx
_0000000000.xml files, where xxx is the version number. The version
numbers for the two files must be the same.
- Copy the MBSchema_0000000 xxx_0000000000.xml and Metabase _0000000xxx_0000000000.xml
files into the C:\windows\system32\inetsrv directory. Rename them mbschema.xml
and metabase.xml, respectively.
- Restart the IIS Admin Service.
- Reboot the server.
The Windows Components Wizard will now appear immediately when you select Control
Panel, Add or Remove Programs, Add/Remove Windows Components.
—James Lim
james_k_k_lim@apl.com