IIS Service is Automatically Disabled Every Few Hours

[Bill Moore]

I am running Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) and I am having an issue where the IIS service is automatically disabled every few hours.

Has anyone else seen this issue?

[Will.Spencer]

This could be a very tricky issue to troubleshoot.

Does it always happen after the same amount of time? Does it always happen at the same time of day? Does anything else happen at the same time?

Does a network spike occur simultaneously with IIS being disabled? That could point to a DoS (Denial of Service) attack.

Which IIS processes are disabled?

What error message(s) do you receive in the Windows Event Log?

What error message do web site visitors receive when they try to connect to web pages?

If an application fails too often within a short amount of time, IIS will automatically disable it and return a "503 Service Unavailable" error message to any new or queued requests to the application. What applications, if any, are you running through IIS?

[John]

I've got a sneaky feeling you might encounter an error message similar to "The IIS Service terminated unexpectedly".

Without more information it will be hard to pinpoint, but it may be worth checking the status of your patches and service packs. There are a handful of known flaws, particularly in Windows Server 2000, that have these symptoms.

It is also worth checking temp folders, and again poorly written programs or persistant errors can quickly fill them and cause instability. This is a long shot if the time between termination is fairly short, but still a possibility.

If you could limit the number of services running and introduce them over time you may be able to get a better idea of what is causing the problem. This may be a time consuming exercise, but it seems to be a well known problem with few real answers.