title: How to safetly export all IIS settings from one server to another?
body: <p>I am trying to build a virtual machine that clones one of the servers used in production instances of our webapp so that we can do deployment testing on it.</p>
  
  <p>I have gotten all the necessary files over, IIS installed, the database up and running.  To my eye all that remains is to copy all the IIS settings from a production environment to the virtual machine.  In the past I have in similar situations simply backed up the metabase, found the file, moved it to the new machine, and restored.  This is a more difficult scenario however and when I try to do this the target machine tells me the metabase file has "invalid signature".</p>
  
  <p>Googling around for a while I find the the recommendation for this is to use iiscnfg.vbs /export however, the msdn page on <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/73f66ff1-be38-4850-8965-739004acd641.mspx?mfr=true" rel="noreferrer">this</a> recommends using <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/WindowsServer2003/Library/IIS/81f04967-f02f-4845-9795-bad2fe1a1687.mspx?mfr=true" rel="noreferrer">iiscnfg.vbs /copy</a> (though the link points to itself).</p>
  
  <p>So following all the steps for copy, I get the following output:</p>
  
  <pre><code>C:\WINDOWS\system32&gt;cscript.exe iiscnfg.vbs /copy /ts 208.10.202.61 /tu wmydomain\admin /tp mypassword
  Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.6
  Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation 1996-2001. All rights reserved.
  
  Backing up server 127.0.0.1
  Backup complete.
  Mapping local drive E: to admin share on server 127.0.0.1
  Mapping local drive F: to admin share on server 208.10.202.61
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Which looks good, except that on the target computer it would seem that nothing has changed.  What gives?  Is there another way to do this?</p>