No Enterprise Manager - 500 error

Question

I have installed CF9 Enterprise (32bit install) on a Windows 2008 Server SP2, 32 bit server (two of them, in fact), with Web Server / IIS role installed. Installed Role Services of  Application Development (ASP.NET, ASP, CGI, ISAPI extensions/filters, SSI's) role installed . Then installed the 9.01 patch, ran the CF "Web Server Configuration Tool" for all sites (there is only the Default Web site installed). Did not install the IIS6 management extensions (since the Web Server Configuration Tool doesn't like that to be installed.
I was able to get to the Cold Fusion administrator (at http://localhost/CFIDE/administrator/index.cfm ) page, and login successfully. The System Information page shows ColdFusion Enterprise version  9,0,1,274733  , with the OS of Windows Server 2008 R2 (OS Version 6.1), Adobe Driver version 4.0 (Build 0005).
This CD Administrator page does not show the Enterprise Manager menu choice on the left side. If I use an address of http://localhost/CFIDE/administrator/entman/index.cfm (after verifying those files are in the 'entman' folder), I get an HTTP Error 500.0 page. Sometimes that page will be inside the CF Adminstrator page frame, but still the 500.0 errorr. The files are in the 'physical path' as F:\inetpub\wwwroot\CFIDE\administrator\entman\index.cfm .
Have done massive searches on the Adobe forums here, and via other search engines, and have not found the solution. Have tried seting the Application Pool Defaults to "enable 32-bit applications' to 'true' or 'false', either setting still gets the 500.0 error on the 'entman' page.
All settings on the server are set to default values. I have done a full uninstall, reinstall of CF; a full rebuild of the server, but still the 500 error.
The "Adobe ColdFusion Server Manager" application works OK; I have installed the latest version of Adobe Air.
Am extremely puzzled as to why the Enterprise Managr cannot be run. (And a bit frustrated also.)
Ideas?
Thanks...Rick..

Answer 1

Rick, before you reinstall, you can probably correct things. It just seems you've gotten yourself into a bit of a bind. I hope the following can help you recover if you want to, or at least help you (or other readers) understand things better.
To your first point, what happens if you just go to the main page (not the entman subdirectory)? What do you see in the top left of the left navbar? It should say "Server: cfusion" if you are indeed seeing the cfusion instance (where the Enterprise Manager is found). If you see another server name there, you're viewing the CF Admin for THAT instance, not the cfusion one. And if you see no mention of a "Server:" (above the "expand all" phrase), then you are NOT viewing the CFAdmin of a multiserver instance but rather of either an Enterprise Server, or Standard, or Development deployment of CF.
It's easy for that to happen, depending on how you configure the web server (whether manually, or during installation of CF, or using the web server configuration tool). Since you're using no port in your first example, that's using port 80 which is typically responded to by an external web server (like IIS or Apache). Since you say you're using IIS, you can look at properties for the site (whatever is responding to localhost, in your case) to see how its configured to hand CFM files to CF. (Since you're on IIS 7.5, select "handler mappings" in the "content view" while selecting the site, then look for the mapping for path "*.cfm". Double click the mapping to see the value for its "executable". That indicates the directory where CF lives that it's passing requests to.)
As for your second examples, those are using the ports typically associated with the internal web server (as opposed to the external ones like IIS or Apache), which can be enabled optionally either during CF installation or afterward by changing a config file (or automatically for newly created multiserver instances). To be clear, 8300 is the typical port for the built-in web server for the cfusion instance, and 8500 is the typical port for Server/Standard deployments. The actual numbers for any given CF deployment can change, if the port is already in use at installation, or if someone picks a different one when configuring things manually.
To your point 3, I don't think anyone was saying that you had a "JRun4 folder in the E:\ColdFusion9 folder". Rather, the point being made was that there are two primary places where CF is installed, depending on the deployment option chosen. For CF Standard or Enterprise/Developer Server deployments, it's put into the \ColdFusion9 directory (for cf9). For Enterprise/Developer Multiserver deployments, it's put into \JRun4.
The fact that you have both (it seems, from your earlier note) indicates that you have implemented both kinds of deployments (to your point 5, also). That's perfectly acceptable to do. But it can cause the kind of confusion you're seeing. It may be that IIS has been configured to pass requests (for localhost) to the CF Standard/Server deployment, not your Multiserver cfusion instance. Running the web server config tool (from the multiserver deployment) and configuring it to pass the site to that cfusion instance would solve that. 
Then again, you may instead want to pass the site to some new instance. You could configure it to do that instead, but then you do need a way to get to that cfusion instance. That is why Isaac suggested that the 8300 port might work. That would be the typical way to access the cfusion instance. You can look at the instance's jrun configuration file (C:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\SERVER-INF\jrun.xml) to see both whether the built-in web server is enabled and what its port is. Look for the entry:
Whatever value that is, try using that. If you change either, you need to restart the instance for them to take effect (and beware that if you make any error, the instance may not start. See the /jrun/logs directory for more information.)
As for your 4th point, it is interesting that you see the entman directory. But I just looked at a CF9 Standard deployment I have, and the directory is indeed there. We might assume it's only put there for Enterprise Multiserver deployments, but maybe not. Someone else can confirm if they see it, too. Anyway, when I try to visit it (with my Standard deployment of CF), I don't get a 500 error, but I do get a blank page. Regardless, perhaps your problem is that your localhost site is configured to pass cfm page requests to something other than a cfusion instance. That would likely be the only one where CF would respond to a request for the Enterprise Manager.
Hope some of that helps. But yes, if you removed everything and started over, I'd expect all would work as well. If you have any reason to keep what seems to be more than one deployment of CF (as some do), then I hope the info above explains both how to do it and how it can get a little crossed up.
/charlie arehart
[email protected]
Providing CF and CFBuilder troubleshooting services
at http://www.carehart.org/consulting