Just the other day I installed Cold Fusion Enterprise on one of our web servers hosted externally. After the re-boot I fired up a browser to test the installation. Alas the server wouldn’t execute .cfm file extensions, instead offering me the chance to download these. The problem was down to the installation program not mapping .cfm extensions to the Application settings. You can check the mappings and fix this by carrying out the following steps:

1. Start up IIS MMC.
2. Right click on your site and select Properties.
3. Change to Home Directory, and in the Application settings box, click on the configuration button.
4. Under the Add mapping tab yo can see all the file extensions that your server can interpret. If .cfm is not listed, this is the reason your server s not executing the Cold Fusion templates.
5. Click on the Add button and complete the dialogue. Under executable specify the path and file name for your CF server executable, usually <drive letter>:CFUSION\Bin\iscf.dll. Next specify the file extension, i.e. .cfm and make sure that the option for Scrip engine is ticked.

Repeat the same step for the file extension .dbm, if it’s not listed either. Once done click on OK and OK again to return to the console. Fire up your browser and try it again. The files should now execute.