Hello Steve! Sorry to hear you're having trouble with this! We have seen a few environments that fail to download and/or configure one of the following items:
- Application Request Routing module
- URL Rewrite Module
- .NET 8 components
The error you're seeing could be caused by any one of these I believe, so I recommend checking each of them. To do that open up IIS and click on your server in the tree on the left, then click on the Application Request Routing module. Inside of there click on Server Proxy Settings on the right to see if its enabled and configured. If you see it turned on and using a timeout at the top of 1200 this should be in good shape. Next, click on the SmarterMail site in the tree on the left, then open up its URL Rewrite module from the middle. Inside of there, you should see two rules listed in the top pane, and if you click on View Server Variables you should see several headers listed here. Finally, open up your Programs and Features on the server and verify you see .NET 8 listed.
If either of the first two are missing you should be able to follow the readme in our installation directory to correct those, whereas the last problem will require a manual download of those components which can be found by clicking the link in the error it logs to the Windows Event Viewer when SmarterMail fails to start up. If you encounter any errors correcting those you'll need to follow those up individually as well as we've seen some environments fail to deploy these components due to issues in the Windows installation itself. My bet though is that we're likely facing one of the first two possible culprits.
We have a couple of development tasks ongoing to smooth these install operations further and make them more resilient to variations in customer environments so keep an eye out for our next release build for updates on that front as well. If you need a hand please don't hesitate to reach out!
Kyle Kerst
Lead Internal Network/System Administrator
SmarterTools Inc.