30. December 2009 17:50
Setting up FTP on Windows Server 2008 isn’t as easy as in previous versions and the steps you need to take vary depending on what version of IIS you have installed.
Unless you upgrade to IIS 7.5, FTP in IIS 7 is still managed with IIS 6 Manager!
Failed to Retrieve Directory Listing
The first hurdle I encountered when trying to connect using Filezilla was the error message “Failed to Retrieve Directory Listing”. Filezilla was able to connect but couldn’t list the files in the remote folder.
A work around to this is to run Filezilla in active mode (Edit > Settings > Connection > FTP > Active), but some programs that use FTP such as Windows Live Writer can’t be set to use active and prefer passive FTP. Read more about active and passive FTP.
Configuring Passive FTP on IIS
Configuring Passive FTP on IIS essentially involves configuring FTP port ranges in IIS for the passive connection and then opening up those ports in Windows Firewall on the server.
Depending on what version of IIS you have installed I can verify that both of these methods work. Although the c:\Inetpub\adminiscripts folder didn’t exist on my server so I ended up getting them from a Windows Server 2003 machine.
My advice would be to upgrade to IIS 7.5.
