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Starting and Stopping Services and Sites

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

Infrequently, you might make configuration changes in IIS 6.0 that require you to restart IIS before the changes can take effect. For example, if you change the application isolation mode in which your server is running, such as when you change from worker process isolation mode to IIS 5.0 isolation mode or vice versa, you need to restart IIS. If you make this configuration change by using IIS Manager, you are prompted to restart IIS after you click OK to confirm the change. If you make this configuration change by using a command-line utility, such as Adsutil.vbs, you can use the IISReset command-line utility to complete the change. Both methods — using the Restart IIS command in IIS Manager or using a command-line utility — allow you to stop, start, and restart IIS Internet services, as well as restart your computer.

When you restart the Internet service, 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, avoid restarting, stopping, or rebooting your server.

For a list of features designed to improve IIS reliability and remedy the need to restart IIS, see the Alternatives to Restarting IIS section in the Restarting IIS topic in the IIS 6.0 Operations Guide, which is accessible from IIS Manager.

For information about restarting IIS services, and starting, stopping, or pausing individual sites, see Starting and Stopping Services.

Saving Your Configuration to Disk

As a safeguard, if you must stop or restart IIS, save your configuration to disk before you perform the restart. Your configuration is automatically saved if you enable the edit-while-running feature (this feature is not enabled by default). For more information about the edit-while-running feature, see IIS Metabase.

Alternatively, you can manually save your configuration to disk. For information about manually saving your configuration to disk, see Saving Configurations.

If You Receive an Error Stating That IISReset Is Disabled

If the IISReset command-line utility is disabled, then the command-line or IIS Manager calls that require IISReset.exe fail and return an error stating that IISReset is disabled. Actions that fail include the Restart IIS command in IIS Manager and Service Control Manager (SCM) recovery configuration actions that use the IISReset command-line utility (for example, the default IIS Admin SCM recovery path). However, SCM recovery actions that do not use the IISReset command-line utility continue to function (for example, the default World Wide Web Publishing Service [WWW service] SCM recovery path that restarts the WWW service).