How to Setup an FTP Server in Windows XP

by Miguel · January 23, 2011

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1. Click on Start, Control Panel and go to Add/Remove Programs. Then click on Add/Remove Windows Components In the components wizard, scroll down until you see IIS in the list and check it off.

2. Before you click Next though, make sure you click on Details and then check off File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Service.

3. Click OK and then click Next.

Windows will go ahead and install the necessary IIS files along with the FTP service. You may be asked to insert your Windows XP or Windows Vista disk at this point.

Setup and configure IIS for FTP

1. Once IIS has been installed, you may have to restart your computer. Now we want to go ahead and open the IIS configuration panel to setup our FTP server. So go to Start, then Control Panel and click on Administrative Tools. You should now see an icon for Internet Information Services.

2. When you open IIS for the first time, you’ll only see your computer name in the left hand menu. Go ahead and click the + symbol next to the computer name and you’ll see a couple of options like Web Sites, FTP Sites, etc. We’re interested in FTP Sites, so expand that out also. You should see Default FTP Site, click on it.

3. You’ll notice after you click on the default FTP site that there are a couple of buttons at the top that look like VCR buttons: Play, Stop, and Pause. If the Play button is greyed out, that means the FTP server is active. Your FTP server is now up and running! You can actually connect to it via your FTP client software. I use Smart FTP, but you can use whatever you like best.

4. Open your FTP client software and type in localhost as the host name and choose Anonymous for the login. Connect and you should now see an empty folder.

5. Ok, so that’s step 1! Now where the heck is this folder that you are currently viewing? Well the default FTP site is actually located in C:Inetpubftproot. Open this directory and dump some files into it.

6. Now refresh on your FTP client and you should now see your files listed! I also have a video tutorial on how to setup an FTP in Windows 7 Take a look.