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Asked: 2026-06-18T00:53:38+00:00

I am running IIS 7 on Windows Server 2008 R2 with PHP 5.4. One

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I am running IIS 7 on Windows Server 2008 R2 with PHP 5.4. One of my PHP scripts is trying to access a file on a protected network share using a UNC path. How can I change the IIS service account to an account that has permission to access the share? This is really easy to do on Apache HTTP server (you just change it), but it’s not clear how to do with IIS. What can I do?

Update:

I was able to get things working using the “Connect As” option in the “Basic Settings” of my website and then specifying an account that has access to the network share. It appears that my problem is related to this question:

https://serverfault.com/questions/366234/iis-identities-application-pool-vs-connect-as-in-basic-settings

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  1. Editorial Team

    For IIS 7 running on Windows Server 2008 R2 … In the IIS Manager, select the Application Pool under which your Web Site is running.

    Click “Advanced Settings”. There will be an entry for Identity (it is under the Process Model section). Click it, provide credentials for your account that has permission to access the share.

    UPDATE

    You should make sure that if you are using an Active Directory Domain Account, you provided that correctly under Identity for the running App Pool. For example, MYDOMAIN\myAccount.

    After making this change, you will need to do the following:

    1. Stop the Web Site.
    2. Recycle your Application Pool.
    3. Start the Web Site.

    UPDATE II

    From the comment discussion on this answer, @HydroPowerDeveloper was able to get the PHP script to be able to access the network share via UNC path using WebSite -> Basic Settings -> “Connect As” and setting the credentials there.

    In the past, I have always used the approach of setting Identity via Application Pool and that has allowed my code to access Network shares via UNC path.

    However, all of the sites/applications I have deployed on IIS are .NET based WCF or ASPX sites.

    I would speculate (but am not 100% certain on this, would need research/testing to confirm) that the Identity specified in the Application Pool is used by executing .NET code, whereas the “Connect As” is used by the PHP script.

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