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When installing the Microsoft Web Platform installer on Windows Home Server and enabling the UrlScan feature during setup, parts of the Windows Home Server Connector will stop functioning properly. In particular, the Windows Home Server Console will be unable to retrieve client updates from the server and instead respond with a “404 – Resource not found” message on the setup screen. The reason for this is the default configuration of UrlScan, which blocks certain file extensions and special characters that are used in URL strings submitted by the Connector to the server.

Solution

To re-enable support for the WHS Connector, the filtering of backslashes and executable file extensions need to be turned off:

1. Navigate to the UrlScan installation folder
   Normally this is in C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\urlscan\
2. Open the file UrlScan.ini in your favorite text editor
3. In the [DenyExtensions] section comment out the entry for .exe
4. In the [DenyUrlSequences] section comment out the entry for the backslash
5. Save all changes to the file.