Windows could not start the Windows Process Activation Service service on Local Computer.

Got a hit from my IIS 7, which hosts Share Point 2010.World wide web publishing service refused to start as there is a dependency with Windows Process activation service. It just says

The World Wide Web Publishing Service service depends on the Windows Process Activation Service service which failed to start because of the following error: The system cannot find the file specified

Restarting WAS results in

"The Windows Process Activation Service service terminated with the following error:The system cannot find the file specified."

Fortunately Scott Hanselman's blog article comes to the rescue to identify the issue. Some of folders within c:\inetpub was missing and Scott taught the way to locate the problem using Process monitor.



Good to have an additional tool narrow down the issue.

Where is my iisapp.vbs in Win 2008 Server ?

In sharepoint development iisapp is one of the script which I use heavily to find the application pools running and to recycle a single application pool. This is the usual case in doing development against Win 2003 & IIS 6. While starting the development in Win 2008 server soon it showed me that I'm dealing with a different web server.

Hit the command line console and gave iisapp, it replied that it is not an internal command or invalid command. IIS 7.0 gotta new administration console command called appcmd.

Giving the command "%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd.exe list wp" provides me the information about the running application pools in IIS 7

Yet another tool to learn in a SharePoint developer's life ....

Setting up an FTP server step-by-step

In windows 2003 FTP service is not installed by default

1. Click Start, point to Control Panel, and then click Add or Remove Programs.
2. Click Add/Remove Windows Components.
3. In the Components list, click Application Server, click Internet Information Services (IIS) (but do not select or clear the check box), and then click Details.
4. Click to select the following check boxes (if they are not already selected):
   Common Files
   File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Service
   Internet Information Services Manager

configure FTP Server for anonymous access

1. Start Internet Information Services Manager or open the IIS snap-in.
2. Expand Server_name, where Server_name is the name of the server.
3. Expand FTP Sites
4. Right-click Default FTP Site, and then click Properties.
5. Click the Security Accounts tab.
6. Click to select the Allow Anonymous Connections check box (if it is not already selected), and then click to select the Allow only anonymous connections check box.

The FTP server is now configured to accept incoming FTP requests. Copy or move the files that you want to make available to the FTP publishing folder for access. The default folder is drive:\Inetpub\Ftproot, where drive is the drive on which IIS is installed.



Now share your FTP address to the users across internet, they can access files.

IIS management console presents blank window

You open the IIS management console using Inetmgr and you are presented with a empty console no application pools, no web sites, no virtual directories.

This happens occasionally on IIS 6 /IIS 7 which is hosting SharePoint sites. The very quick fix for this issue is restarting Sharepoint's OWSTimer service or make an IISRESET.


Microsoft support explains as follows

"Consider the following scenario. You have a process that has more than one thread. Additionally, the process uses the Internet Information Services (IIS) Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI) provider to access IIS. Two threads access IIS at the same time. In this scenario, you may be unable to manage IIS by using Server Manager"

Microsoft provides a hot fix for this nasty issue, that can be downloaded from the following link

FIX: You may be unable to manage IIS by using Server Manager if two threads access IIS at the same time

SharePoint development VM loves IISReset

When we develop application pages or custom web part development in SharePoint. This requires a lot of IISreset for each and every bit of change in the assembly when we are going to deploy these modified binaries GAC.

IISRESET takes a lot of time instead of that if we recycle the required application pool which is associated to our IIS web application, this will save atleast a minute of dev effort.

This recycling process can be automated by using the following OOB VB script

cscript.exe iisapp.vbs /a SharePointAppPool /r

or
cscript.exe iisapp.vbs /p [Process ID] /r

[Process ID] : This can be obtained just by executing iisapp.vbs in the command line. This will list all the application pools with their process ids

Get more info about IISapp.vbs from Microsoft Technet library

Do you want to recycle all the application pools in your IIS ?

Save the following the VB script to vbs file and replace the MachineName with your Dev machine's name

Set locator = CreateObject("WbemScripting.SWbemLocator")
Set Service = locator.connectserver("MachineName", "root/MicrosoftIISv2")
Set APCollection = Service.InstancesOf("IISApplicationPool")
For Each APInstance In APCollection
APInstance.Recycle
Next

Retrieving the password for IUSR & IWAM accounts

IIS provides  a script file called adsutil.vbs to obtain or set the password for IUSR/IWAM accounts in IIS metabase. Just adding this tip not to forget in future.

More details : http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;297989