Installing Sitecore on Windows 8

If you are installing Sitecore on Windows 8 you may get the following error message.

HTTP Error 500.19 - Internal Server Error

The requested page cannot be accessed because the related configuration data for the page is invalid.

Config Source:

 3337:     </modules>
 3338:     <handlers>
 3339:       <remove name="WebServiceHandlerFactory-Integrated" />

See the sample screen shot below:

There are few things to check that may resolve this issue:

1) Check the web.config file in the sitecore website directory for

Check this in the web.config and change overrideModeDefault from Deny to Allow.

<configSections>
  <sectionGroup name="system.webServer">
    <section name="handlers" overrideModeDefault="Deny" /> 

2) Open up IIS and click on the IIS Root Usually your computer name.  When you do you can click on Feature Delegation and set Handler Mapping to Read/Write.  You may need to do the same for Modules.

3) If this does not work then ASP.NET is not registered properly with IIS.  

NOTE: Executing the usual aspnet_regiis -i may not solve this issue on Windows 8.  

On Windows 8 this command now tells you to use Control Panel's Turn Windows Features On/Off. It's IIS\World Wide Web Services\Application Development Features\ASP.NET 4.5