This is an issue with FastCGI on Plesk panels in IIS and there is a work around. For others with the same issue it might be just that IIS is not set up correctly. Again I want to thank Aaron for sticking with this. He is amazing in his dedication to Modx.
The defining php.ini when set to FastCGI mode (PHP5) does not define the environment properly. I am on a Windows 2003 server. Because of this I was having issues in Modx with base_path and writing files on the root. Let me also note just for what it is worth that my Wordpress applications seem to work fine without this fix but Modx needed it.
The defining documents to this issue are:
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/247/using-fastcgi-to-host-php-applications-on-iis-60/
http://forums.iis.net/t/1157444.aspx
http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/745/enable-per-site-php-configuration-on-iis-7-and-iis-60/
Even though on Plesk it was set to FastCGI mode, in my PHPinfo file I saw that the defining php.ini had the setting "fastcgi.impersonate = 0" The above articles point to the importance of "fastcgi.impersonate = 1"
As my tech pointed out:
In Windows 2003 server, the path to look for php.ini in FastCGI is hard-coded in the fastcgi.dll, we cannot make any changes in it, so as a workaround, I was forced to edit fastcgi.ini in C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv like this.
====
php:1000=mydomain
php5:1000=mydomain
phtml:1000=mydomain
[mydomain]
ExePath=C:\Program Files (x86)\parallels\Plesk\Additional\PleskPHP5\php-cgi.exe
EnvironmentVars=PHPRC:D:\inetpub\vhosts\mydomain.com\httpdocs\
====
where 1000 is the domain ID in IIS
The original default values were:
====
php:1000=Plesk_php5
php5: 1000=Plesk_php5
phtml: 1000=Plesk_php5
[Plesk_php5]
ExePath=C:\Program Files (x86)\parallels\Plesk\Additional\PleskPHP5\php-cgi.exe
