Configuring Idle Timeout for a Worker Process

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

You can conserve system resources by configuring worker processes to shut down after a specified period of inactivity. This feature, known as idle timeout, can be used to better manage system resources when the processing load is heavy, when identified worker processes are consistently idle, or when new processing space is not available. If an application pool is shut down due to inactivity and HTTP.sys receives a request for the idle application pool, the WWW service starts a new worker process to replace the one that timed out.

For more information about configuring idle timeout, see Configuring Worker Processes for Idle Timeout.