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Page cannot be displayed error while creating Web application

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While creating a new web application, a 404 'Page not found' error is displayed and the web application is only provisioned on the local server

After a number of web applications have been created in the SharePoint 2010 farm, further attempts to create a new web application through Central Administration result in the following:

The creation process results in a 'Page cannot be displayed' message.

The web application is only provisioned on the Central Administration server.

But if you try to create a site collection on this newly created web app, it fails. Reason is it is not completely done.

After struggling this for a while I found you can resolve by increasing the Shutdown time limit in IIS to a greater value.

Steps

Go to application pool of Central Administration.

Right click on it and go to Advanced Settings

In the Process Model section, increase the shutdown time limit to 200 for example.

It is a good idea to restart IIS now.

After searching on net for a while I found that the reason is during the web application creation process IIS is reset and by default. It allows the "Shutdown time limit" which by default is 90 seconds. Sometimes this might not be enough. And hence it forcibly shuts down in 90 seconds.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 12, 2013
    Thank you for this post! I've been struggling with this problem on a 2013 dev farm for some time now. This is exactly what I needed.  Makes perfect sense now why that was happening.

  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2014
    Thanks for the post! However, when you say "Right click on it and go to Advanced Settings"... Are we right clicking on the new application pool created or SharePoint Central Administration v4? Please specify.

  • Anonymous
    June 11, 2014
    Right click on the Advancced settings of Central Admin

  • Anonymous
    April 08, 2015
    Thank You very much this post saved the day for me

  • Anonymous
    August 19, 2015
    When you say restart IIS does that mean restart central admin website?

    • Anonymous
      December 08, 2016
      I mean IIS Reset. Central admin recycle should also work.

  • Anonymous
    October 31, 2015
    Very useful post saved a lot of time.