Went thru setting up a new server with Web Deploy. once again (and it feels like I’ve posted on this a dozen times, but it’s probably only about 10) I walked thru the following:

1. Remote desktop onto the box.
2. Setup Google Chrome so I could get around IE’s insane “trusted sites” security-through-obstruction policies.
3. Installed Microsoft Web Platform Installer 4.6.
4. Used this tool to install Web Deploy 3.5.
5. Used WPI to set up IIS Recommended Configuration

At this point I was able to go into Visual Studio and deploy a website out to the Default Web Site\{MySiteName} folder that I created. Yay! IIS_IUSRS had sufficient privileges, etc.

Still though I was getting this error message:

Which was odd.The “ASP.NET is not installed” note is a dead giveaway. My first thought was that we were missing some security settings or a key component. But no, everything looked jake:

 

I tried an admin command prompt and reregistering aspnet_regiis as follows:

c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

 

… but had forgotten that in Windows Server 2012 this is done with the “Turn Windows Features On and Off” app. So, I ran that – and lo and behold, a few key things that ASP.NET 4.5 needs weren’t set up initially:

 

I guess this is what happens when someone else “sets up” a server partially (sigh). Easy to fix though. After the setup of these missing roles, voila – suddenly I could (without a restart even!) browse to my site locally, and remotely. Easy!