Increasing the File Upload Size on IIS

Last week a user reported a problem with a file upload on our Intranet which has otherwise performed flawlessly for years. They browsed to the file and selected it as normal, but when they clicked upload “nothing happened”. This is an in-house developed Content Management System, written in classic ASP, and the user is a competent content manager, so user issues did not seem likely. At first we suspected file permissions, as there had been some moving around of directories by system support, but this usually results in a 500 error to IE users with Friendly Errors turned on.

Eventually through perseverance by the user it was determined that files greater than 200 Kbytes would fail, but smaller files would upload OK. At last something to Google!

It turns out that by default Windows 2008 server limits file uploads to 200KB in size. To overcome this limit you must edit the ASP Setting as follows:

Increasing the File Upload Size on IIS

  1. Login to your server
  2. Open Up IIS Manager
  3. Click on ASP
  4. Expand the Limits properties
  5. Change the default 200KB for the helpfully named Maximum Requesting Entity Body Limit to the required value.

Once you have saved that change the upload limit will increase for all the websites on that server. Remember, if you are running clustered servers you need to increase this value on each server in the cluster.

This support tip first appeared on TechCo Training site under the title IIS File Upload Problems