There was an article on this subject in the recent .net magazine (A British internet magazine, not the MS dev app) which I thought I would summarise. Goes something like this..
iis.dll is crippled in XP home edition, an upgrade to Pro is required to run it according to Microsoft.
provides a basic web server product, which can also run CGI, and is 'great for beginners'.
provides another windows based server solution that is more expandable and can be 'coaxed' to run PHP and both provide Java based ASP.
Full instructions for running PWS on Windows ME can be found at billsway.com/notes_public/PWS_WinMe.txt, and 'apparently' the same fix works for XP Home, (although I haven't tried it).
If you have a copy of Windows 2000 on CD, you can coax PWS to work on XP home by trying the following.
1. Open c:\windows\inf\sysoc.inf in a text editor and find the section headed [components]. Change the line "iis=iis.dll, OcEntry, iis.inf, hide, 7" to "iis=iis2.dll, OcEntry, iis2.inf,,7". With your Windows 2000 CD in your drive type 'expand d:\i386\iis.dl_ c:\temp\dll2.inf' at the run prompt.
2. Open the temp folder, copy the newly expanded iis2.dll to c:\windows\system32\setup and iis2.inf in c:\windows\inf, then go to the control panel and choose add/remove windows components. You should now see IIS in the list. Go to Adminstrative tools, and you should now see it.
There are also one or two free online ASP hosts, where you can test pages (if all else fails) at
and
Hope this helps.