[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change]

Restarting IIS

Using the Restart IIS feature within the IIS snap-in, you can stop, start, and restart all Internet services as well as reboot your computer. All of the Internet services listed below are affected, if installed, when the Restart IIS feature is used.

Note    Not all of the services listed below are installed by default. Therefore, only the services that are installed are affected by the Restart IIS feature.

Important    The services listed above can also be started, paused, or stopped individually using Services within Computer Management. However, it is recommended that you use the IIS snap-in instead of Computer Management for managing these services because Internet services shut down and restart differently from other Windows services. Otherwise if these services are managed using Computer Management, the IIS snap-in may not display the correct status of the service until the IIS snap-in is refreshed.

Reasons to restart IIS

Some IIS configuration changes, require that IIS be restarted before the change takes affect, but most configuration changes do not require IIS to be restarted. You may also restart IIS when applications misbehave or become unavailable. Because several Internet services can be run in one process, using Reliable Restart, IIS automatically restarts when applications become defective. If you do not want IIS to restart automatically, see To disable Reliable Restart below.

Using the Restart IIS feature

Using the IIS snap-in, select the Computer icon for which you wish to restart IIS and click All Tasks and Restart IIS from the Action menu. The Stop/Start/Reboot property sheet appears.

Using the Stop/Start/Reboot property sheet you have the option to Start Internet Services, Stop Internet Services, Reboot the computer, or Restart Internet Services. Click the Help button for more information about using the Restart IIS feature.

Reliable Restart

Reliable Restart automatically restarts your Internet services if the Inetinfo.exe process terminates abnormally or if you use Windows Task Manager or Kill.exe to stop Internet services. Reliable Restart is enabled by default. You must disable Reliable Restart to restrict this automatic restart feature.

To disable Reliable Restart

1. Right-click My Computer, and click Manage. The Computer Management window appears.
2. Expand the Services and Applications tree in the left pane, and click Services. All Windows services display in the right pane.
3. Right-click IIS Admin Service, and click Properties. The IIS Admin Service Properties dialog box appears.
4. Click the Recovery tab, and choose Take No Action for each of the drop-down menus.
5. Click OK.

Using Reliable Restart from the command-line

You can use reliable restart from the command line to start, stop, or restart all Internet services (the services listed in the table above) as well as several other options. All of the reliable restart options are described in the command line help for the iisreset command.

          iisreset /?

Example

This example shows how to restart all Internet services using iisreset from the command prompt.

1. Open a command prompt window.
2. Type the following in the command prompt window.

          iisreset computername /restart

Where computername is the NETBIOS name of your computer. Note: if you are logged on locally then the computername parameter is not required.

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