Tracing Startup and Shutdown Problems in the IIS Admin Service

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

In IIS 6.0, the IIS Admin Service loads the primary configuration file for IIS sites, called the IIS MetaBase.xml file, and related in-memory configuration services. The IIS Admin service also loads the following:

  • The File Transport Protocol (FTP) service

  • The Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP) service

  • The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service

If the IIS Admin Service experiences a problem (hangs) while starting up or shutting down, diagnosing the problem can be extremely difficult because there are potentially four services involved. In the past, troubleshooting IISADMIN startup or shutdown hangs usually required calling Microsoft Product Support Services who would then help the user collect a process dump of the IIS Admin Service.

Currently, the best way to troubleshoot hangs in the IIS Admin service is to trace the service using the IIS Admin provider. Once you have collected trace data in the trace log, you can view the trace log to learn specific details about when the service stops responding. You can trace the IIS Admin service during startup or shutdown by choosing the Startup or the Shutdown flag. If necessary, you can trace using both flags at the same time.

In order to capture data in the trace log, you need to enable IIS Admin tracing and then reproduce the problem on your IIS server. If the IIS Admin service is currently hung, you have two options:

  1. If the IIS Admin service hung on startup, enable tracing as described in How to Trace the IIS Admin Service. Then use the iisreset /no forcecomputername command to restart the IIS server. After iisreset terminates the process and IIS restarts, the IIS Admin service will report trace data in the trace log. For more information about the iisreset command, see Restarting IIS.

  2. If the IIS Admin service hung on shutdown, use the iisreset /no forcecomputername command to restart the IIS server. Once the IIS server has restarted, enable tracing and then shutdown the IIS Admin service.

Note

The IIS Admin service can be configured to restart automatically, a feature known as Automatic Restart. If you are attempting to trace the IIS Admin service to troubleshoot hangs, you may want to disable this feature until you have remedied the problem. For more information about this feature, see "Automatic Restart" in Restarting IIS.

For information about the events listed in the trace log, see Tracing Events Reference.