Here are the steps I followed for configuring IIS on Win7 to run with Cognos 8

1. In the left Connections pane, expand the server node, expand Sites, 

right-click on Default Website, and click Add Virtual Directory. 

2. Enter 'cognos8' for the Alias and enter the path to the c8/webcontent 
directory in Physical Path (default C:\Program Files\cognos\c8\webcontent). 
Click OK. 


3. Right click on the newly-created cognos8 Virtual Directory and click Add 
Virtual Directory 


4. Enter 'cgi-bin' for the Alias and enter the path to the c8/cgi-bin directory in Physical Path (default C:\Program Files\cognos\c8\cgi-bin). Click OK. 


5. Right click on the cognos8 Virtual Directory again and click Add Virtual 
Directory 


6. Enter 'help' for the Alias and enter the path to the 
c8/webcontent/documentation directory in Physical Path (default C:\Program 
Files\cognos\c8\webcontent\documentation). Click OK. 


7. In the left Connections pane, select the server node, then double-click ISAPI and CGI Restrictions in the right pane. 


8. In the Actions pane click Add, enter the path to either cognosisapi.dll or 
cognos.cgi depending on which you will use (default C:\Program 
Files\cognos\c8\cgi-bin\cognosisapi.dll or C:\Program 
Files\cognos\c8\cgi-bin\cognos.cgi), check the 'Allow extension path to execute' box, then click OK. 


9. In the left Connections pane, select the cgi-bin virtual directory, then 
double-click Handler Mappings in the right pane. 


10. In the Actions pane click Add Module Mapping, then enter either 'cognos.cgi' or 'cognosisapi.dll' for the Request Path, choose either CGIModule or ISAPIModule for the Module, give it an identifiable name like 'CGI-cognos' then click OK. 


11. In order for Cognos Administration to function properly, the directive added to the IIS configuration file by step 11 has to be edited manually. Depending on how IIS is set up, this will have been written either to 
C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationhost .config or to 
<cognos_home>/c8/cgi-bin/web.config. Check those files for the following entry: <add name='CGI-cognos' path='*.cgi' verb='*' modules='CgiModule' 
resourceType='Unspecified' /> and add allowPathInfo='true' to it like this: 
<add name='CGI-cognos' path='*.cgi' verb='*' modules='CgiModule' resourceType='Unspecified' allowPathInfo='true' /> 


In addition to the above steps, when running IIS on a Windows 2008 Server 64-bit installation, you will need to create and configure an application pool for the Cognos cgi-bin directory that permits 32-bit applications to execute