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I have tested around 10 webservers, I have found either

a) simple and lightweight servers but good for intranet tests only because not secure @ all
b) servers with Windows binary that can't run as service, or unstable
c) and then you have Apache of course

Hiawatha is to me the best compromise under Windows. 1-Lightweight, 2-Seems stable and can run as a service 3-Dev and Forum are active, Hugo is very helpful

Good job and thanks HUGO, I will run my site with Hiawatha!

Thanks and you're most welcome!

I am curious as to what webservers 'kfft' has tried.

I currently host a website (on a Win XP machine) on our companies intranet using Mongoose (http://code.google.com/p/mongoose/). I have not had any stability issues with it and security is not too much of a concern since it is behind the companies firewall, but it has an issue serving up larger PDF files (http://code.google.com/p/mongoose/issues/detail?id=113). This problem has made me start looking for other possible web servers. Right now, the replacement condenders are Hiawatha and Appweb (http://www.appwebserver.org/).

I like many of Hiawatha's features, but am a bit concerned about its stability since it is dependent on Cygwin. I wouldn't consider my website to be "mission critical", but enough people access it that I don't want to experience stability issues.

Has anyone out there experemented with "small" web servers that run on Win XP? If so, what are your reasons for using Hiawatha, or something else?

This is one of the biggest mistake you can make when it comes to web security. A firewall doesn't stop web application exploits. If your website has an exploitable vulnerability, even 10 firewalls won't make it secure.

I have tested mongoose, it seems Valenok has not worked much on the project these last months and mongoose is left with unacceptable security holes even for an intranet http://code.google.com/p/mongoose/issues/detail?id=90