ColdFusion 11 – Manually remove connector configuration

This post deals with removing connector residues on web-servers, IIS and Apache, if and when the wsconfig utility is not available for un-configuring existing connector configurations.

Connector residues are left behind with incorrect uninstallation of ColdFusion Getting Started servers, or more simply, the ZIP Installers. The right way to get rid of a Getting Started server, would be to check and remove any existing connector configurations, and then delete the extracted ColdFusion directory. Failing to do this may result in connector residues strewn on IIS or Apache, and future connector configurations may behave unexpectedly, or on the extreme end, stop the web server from firing up!

Below are a handful of steps to remove ColdFusion connector residues on Internet Information Services (IIS):

1. Verify ColdFusion connector is the culprit before proceeding
2. Open Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager
3. Select Server / Machine Name > Default Document and delete entry for index.cfm
4. Select Server / Machine Name > ISAPI and CGI Restrictions and delete entries that point to the ColdFusion install directory
5. Select Server / Machine Name > ISAPI Filters and delete entries that point to the ColdFusion install directory
6. Select Server / Machine Name > Handler Mappings and delete entries with paths, ‘*.cfc’, ‘*.cfm’, ‘*.cfml’, ‘*.cfr’ or ‘*.cfswf’
7. Repeat the steps 3 to 6 for all sites configured with ColdFusion
8. Delete contents of the /ColdFusion11/config/wsconfig/CONFIGURATION_NUMBER/ directory, if it contains filenames starting with ‘isapi’
9. Restart IIS / sites
10. Delete ‘.air’ mapping from MIME Types, if it causes any issues

Further, here are some steps to remove ColdFusion connector residues on the Apache Web Server:

1. Locate the Apache conf directory
2. Find the mod_jk.conf file. Delete it
3. Open the file, httpd.conf (apache2.conf on Ubuntu)
4. Scroll down right to the bottom. Remove the entry that refers to the mod_jk.conf file
5. Delete contents of the /ColdFusion11/config/wsconfig/CONFIGURATION_NUMBER/ directory, if it contains filenames starting with ‘mod_jk’
6. Restart Apache