Unable to install MSMQ HTTP Support - 0x80070003

  • Article

You may see the following error message when you are trying to install HTTP support for MSMQ messaging:

"The Message Queuing IIS extension /LM/W3Svc/1/Root/MSMQ cannot be created. Message Queuing will not be able to receive HTTP Messages.

Error Code 0x80070003
Error Description: The system cannot find the path specified"

What this is saying is that the MSMQ virtual directory cannot be created.
Note that setup wants to create this under "/LM/W3Svc/1/Root" which is the root of the website with ID number 1 - the default web site.
So if you have removed the default website - and there are good security reasons to - then you will break MSMQ setup.

The solutions are to recreate the default website before installing the "MSMQ HTTP Support" component.

  • Reinstall IIS (maybe too sledgehammer-walnut to be useful)
  • Or you can create a new website and move it to the position of default web site.

CD %SYSTEMDRIVE%\Inetpub\AdminScripts\
CSCRIPT adsutil.vbs STOP_SERVER W3SVC/"xx"
CSCRIPT adsutil.vbs MOVE W3SVC/"xx" W3SVC/1
CSCRIPT adsutil.vbs START_SERVER W3SVC/1

where "xx" is the ID number of the new website.