IIS 6 Properties
I was having an issue today and thought I would share the solution I found.
I had an IIS 6 server that was hosting some web pages. In a directory beneath the root I had some .exe files that I wanted to like to on the main page to allow downloading. Whenever I would click on the files I would get a 404 error. I knew the files were in the right spot and the naming was correct.
I discovered that in order to allow .exe files to be downloaded from your IIS 6 server you need to remove the “Execute” permissions from the folder that the .exe files are sitting in… not the entire virtual directory, just the particular folder that the .exe files are sitting in.
To do this you have to open the IIS Manager, right click on the directory containing the .exe files, and change the Execute Permissions to “Scripts Only”.