Enabling Anonymous Authentication

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

Use the following procedure to enable anonymous authentication for a Web site.

Important

You must be a member of the Administrators group on the local computer to perform the following procedure or procedures. As a security best practice, log on to your computer by using an account that is not in the Administrators group, and then use the runas command to run IIS Manager as an administrator. At a command prompt, type runas /user:Administrative_AccountName "mmc %systemroot%\system32\inetsrv\iis.msc".

Procedures

To enable Anonymous authentication

1. In IIS Manager, double-click the local computer; right-click the Web Sites folder, an individual Web site folder, a virtual directory, or a file; and then click Properties.

   Note

   Configuration settings made at the Web Sites level are inherited by all of the Web sites on the server. You can override inheritance by configuring the individual site or site element.

2. Click the Directory Security or File Security tab, and then, in the Authentication and access control section, click Edit.

3. Select the Enable anonymous access check box.

4. Click OK twice.

Related Information

• For information about changing the account for anonymous authentication, see Changing the Account Used for Anonymous Authentication.

• For information about other types of authentication, see Authentication in IIS 6.0.