PRB: Global.asa Does Not Fire from Personal Web Server on Windows 98

When you develop Visual Basic Internet Information Server (IIS) applications (WebClasses) on Microsoft Windows 98, you may not be able to access any session or application variables from the Global.asa file. This problem may also occur when you work locally (in Local Mode) in a Visual InterDev project.

The virtual directory that Visual Basic (or Visual InterDev in Local Mode) sets up is not created as an application. For Global.asa to fire, the virtual directory must be an application. When Global.asa fires, the session and application variables are set to the appropriate values.

To resolve this problem, remove the existing virtual directory, and create a new virtual directory in Personal Web Manager as follows:

1. Open Personal Web Manager (click the black and white icon on the taskbar).
2. On the Advanced tab, click your WebClass project directory (for example, \test) or your Visual InterDev local Web project's folder (for example, \test_local), and then click Properties.
3. Copy the directory alias and its physical path, and then click OK.
4. Click Remove to remove the particular virtual directory.
5. From the treeview, click the home directory, and then click Add to add the virtual directory.
6. Paste the information that you copied in Step 3.

To verify that the Global.asa file is firing, you can write out any session variable or application variable from Global.asa in your WebClass or Active Server Pages (ASP) page.

For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: