IIS 6.0 F1: Restarting IIS

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Applies To: Windows Server 2008 R2

Restarting or stopping Internet Information Services (IIS), or rebooting your Web server, is a severe action. When you restart the Internet services, all sessions connected to your Web server (including Internet, FTP, SMTP, and NNTP) are dropped. Any data held in Web applications is lost. All Internet sites are unavailable until Internet services are restarted. For this reason, you should avoid restarting, stopping, or rebooting your server if at all possible. IIS 6.0 includes application pool recycling and several other features that provide alternatives to restarting IIS. For a list of features designed to improve IIS reliability and remedy the need to restart IIS, see "Restarting IIS" in IIS Help.

Note

Internet services include Web, FTP, SMTP, NNTP, and IIS Administrative services.

What do you want IIS to do?

This is a list of IIS restart options, as well as explanations and consequences of each option.

Start Internet Services

Click to start all Internet services. You can use the Services node in the Computer Management snap-in to change which services start up automatically. If Internet services do not respond after issuing this command, restart your computer.

Stop Internet Services

Click to stop all Internet services. All sessions connected to your Web server (including Internet, FTP, SMTP, and NNTP) are dropped. Any data held in Web applications is lost. All Internet sites are unavailable until Internet services are restarted. Certain changes to IIS require stopping the Internet services in order to register those changes, for example when installing a new COM component or ISAPI filter.

Restart <Local Machine>

Click to reboot your server. Rebooting your server is a severe action. All sessions connected to your Web server (including Internet, FTP, SMTP, and NNTP) are dropped. Any data held in Web applications is lost. All Internet sites are unavailable until the server and Internet services are restarted.

Restart Internet Services

Click to stop and then restart all Internet services. All sessions connected to your Web server (including Internet, FTP, SMTP, and NNTP) are dropped. Any data held in Web applications is lost. All Internet sites are unavailable until Internet services are restarted.

To learn more about restarting IIS, including a list of features in IIS 6.0 that improve reliability and availability and thereby mitigate the need to restart your server or the Internet service, see the IIS 6.0 online documentation on the Microsoft Windows Server TechCenter.