Event ID 5161 — IIS Web Site Availability

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2008

Internet Information Services (IIS) Web sites that use HTTP rely on several important IIS components for their availability. The Windows Process Activation Service (WAS), the World Wide Publishing Service (W3SVC), the HTTP service, all must be running correctly. In addition, a properly running application pool must be available for the Web site’s applications. If any of these components is not functioning, the Web site will not be available.

Event Details

Product: Internet Information Services
ID: 5161
Source: Microsoft-Windows-WAS
Version: 7.0
Symbolic Name: WAS_EVENT_WMS_APPLICATION_NO_APP_ROOT_ERROR
Message: Site %1 has no root application defined, so the site will be ignored.

Resolve

Set the application path for a site

A Web site must have a valid application path. If the application path is incorrect, the site will not start. Set a valid application path for the Web site, then restart the site.

To perform these procedures, you must have membership in Administrators, or you must have been delegated the appropriate authority.

Set a valid application path for the Web site

To set a valid application path for the Web site:

  1. Open an elevated Command Prompt window. Click Start, point to All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.
  2. Type cd %Windir%\system32\inetsrv\config
  3. Type notepad ApplicationHost.config.
  4. In Notepad, search for the sites section under system.applicationHost, and locate the Web site that is causing the error.
  5. Correct the application path, or add the following to the site configuration so that it has a default path:

        <application path="/">

              <virtualDirectory path="/" physicalPath="%SystemDrive%\inetpub\wwwroot" />

        </application>

Restart the Web site

To restart the Web site:

  1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Administrative Tools.
  2. Right-click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and select Run as administrator.
  3. In the IIS Manager Connections Pane, expand the computer name.
  4. Expand Sites.
  5. Select the Web site that has to be restarted.
  6. In the Actions pane, click Stop to stop the site.
  7. In the Actions pane, click Start to start the site.

Verify

To verify that a Web site is started, you can use either IIS Manager or the appcmd command line utility.

To perform these procedures, you must have membership in Administrators, or you must have been delegated the appropriate authority.

To verify that the Web site is started by using the appcmd command line utility:

  1. Open an elevated Command Prompt window. Click Start, point to All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.
  2. Change the directory to %SystemDrive%\Windows\System32\inetsrv.
  3. Run the following command: appcmd.exe list site -site.name:"Site Name". If the Web site is started, the output will resemble the following:

        SITE "Default Web Site" (id:1,bindings:http/*:80:,state:Started)

To verify that the Web site is started by using IIS Manager:

  1. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Administrative Tools.
  2. Right-click Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager and select Run as administrator.
  3. In the Connections pane, expand the computer name.
  4. In the Connections pane, click the Sites node.
  5. In Features View, look for the Web site name. The Web site status will be indicated under the Status column. If the Web site is started and is using the HTTP protocol, Started(http) will appear.

IIS Web Site Availability

Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.0