Event ID 2231 — IIS W3SVC Activity

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2

In order to perform its activities successfully, the Internet Information Services (IIS) World Wide Web Publishing Service (W3SVC) must be free of any I/O errors involving file access, memory availability, and network connections. In addition, any scripts that are used must be accessible and runnning, and any include files must be configured correctly.

Event Details

Product: Internet Information Services
ID: 2231
Source: Microsoft-Windows-IIS-WMSVC
Version: 7.5
Symbolic Name: W3_EVENT_CANNOT_READ_FILE
Message: The server was unable to read the file %1. The Windows 32 error returned from the attempt is %2.

Resolve

Check file access

Possible resolutions include the following:

  • If W3SVC was unable to read a file, verify that the file indicated in the error message exists and that W3SVC has permissions to the file.
  • If the file was too big, reduce its size.
  • The event log message may contain an error number that can provide more information about the issue. To do this, see the following steps.

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

Check for a specific error number:

To check for a specific error number:

  1. In the Event Viewer, select the event that you received.
  2. Click the Details tab, then Friendly View.
  3. If a specific error number is available, the words Binary data: should appear.
  4. Note the number after the colon under In Words.

Find out more about a specific error number

To learn more about a specific error number:

  1. Download the Err.exe utility from the Microsoft Exchange Server Error Code Look-up page.
  2. Click Start, All Programs, Accessories, and then Command Prompt.
  3. At the command prompt, navigate to the directory where you downloaded Err.exe. For example, if you downloaded Err.exe to C:\Err, type cd C:\Err.
  4. Type err errornumber to obtain more information about the error. For example, if the specific error number is 80070005, type err 80070005.
  5. In the example in Step 4, the error resolves to ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED, so your next step would be to check a permissions issue.

Verify

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

To verify that the World Wide Web Publishing service is running:

  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 sc query w3svc, and press ENTER. The World Wide Web Publishing service is running if the state reported for the service is 4 RUNNING.

IIS W3SVC Activity

Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5