Delay of IIS 4.0 when running a cgi application

I am experiencing problems with a cgi application and IIS 4.0, and I would sincerely appreciate any suggestion or help.

The application (mimetex.exe) outputs a gif file to the web browser. I have compiled the application from the source files using the gcc cygnus compiler, and the application works fine since I have tested it from the Windows Command Prompt and I got the expected result.

However, when I try to test the program as a cgi application it takes a long, long time (around one minute) to produce the expected output. I have audited both the access to the cgi application (mimetex.exe) and the cygnus library (cygwinb19.dll). Everything was right: these programs can be accessed by the "Internet Server Anonymous" account and they are loaded into the computer memory. However, the Server's answer is always delayed for about one minute, and during all this time the programs remain as running processes in the computer memory.

I have only been able to get a fast answer from the Server when I changed the Web authentication model from "Anonymous" to "Windows NT Challenge/Response" (I have then to provide username and password) and I run the cgi application from the intranet, that is, using http://localhost/cgi-bin/mimetex.exe

However, when I tried to run the cgi application from the internet, that is, by typing the url into my browser, http://www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/mimetex.exe, I got the same delay again, even if I was still using the "Windows NT Challenge/Response" Web authentication model.

Thanks in advance for any help.

F. Pontiga

Perl?

I don't remember much about IIS4, since it's past it's end of life already (IIS4 is coming up on it's 10th birthday, you know). There are things you need to do to set up cgi in IIS4, google may help. The situation changing with different IIS authentication hints at a permissions problem somewhere, changing to NT challenge/response will cause IIS to operate in the user context of the logged on user that accesses the page, leaving in anonymous will cause IIS to operate in the context of the Internet Guest user account.