After installing IIS, pointing my browser to http://localhost, results
in a "Page cannot be displayed" error.  The same is true if I
substitute my computer's name or 127.0.0.1 for "localhost".  Inserting
index.htm or other web pages into the folder c:\inetpub\wwwroot does
not help. I tried installing IIS on another computer without the above
problem occurring.  However this computer has had a history of
installation and deinstallation that presumably has affected matters. 
At one stage I had to reinstall windows XP, which I did making use of
the folder c:\windows2 instead of c:\windows so as to retain all my
data files. I had a shareware web server installed previously, and
then installed visual studio.net, only to discover that I needed to
install IIS before visual studio.net if I wanted to be able to set up
a server on my computer on which I could create ASP pages.  So I
deinstalled the shareware web server as well as visual studio.net, and
then installed IIS.  This resulted in the present situation, with the
"localhost" problem described above.

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Request for Question Clarification by gregaw-ga on 25 May 2005 13:45 PDT

Are other people able to access web pages hosted on this machine?

If you open a command prompt can you ping localhost or 127.0.0.1?

Do you have your windows firewall enabled?

Thanks!

IIS is a service, so first check to see if it's running.
From a CMD prompt, type:
netstat -an | more
This will tell you everything that is "listening" on your system.
Hopefully, you will find something like 0.0.0.0:80 ... This indicates
that IIS is listening for requests. If you only see your internal IP
address but not 0.0.0.0, then you should be able to point your browser
to your IP address, but IIS is not listening on all IP addresses.

Further, IIS has sub services. If IIS is running, but IIS hasn't
started its WWW server, that will also be problematic.

After all that, if you don't have a default.htm in the location that
the WWW service of IIS thinks is the Document Root, IIS cannot deliver
a page.

Last check is to make certain that WWW service is listening on all
appropriate ports and that the files and folders that WWW service have
the proper permissions to be rendered.

This is a free comment.

1. first of all uninstall IIS from your system .Open Add/remove
programs option in control panel.click on Add/Remove Windows Component
then uncheck Internet Information system.
2. then delete inetpub folder
3. restart your system
4. now reinstall your IIS

this will definetly solve your problem


Regards,
Vimal Lakhera