Is stopping IIS the same as stopping the World Wide Web Publishing service?

Question

I'm sure of come across situations where stopping IIS using the IIS manager has not allowed me access to asp.net bin directory files that are in use but when stopping the World Wide Web Publishing service, the files are then accessible.

The question was asked, are they not doing the same thing? Can anyone confirm that they are the same thing...I've always thought they were two different things...

I'm specifically talking about IIS6 on Windows Server 2003 (in case it's changed in different server or IIS versions)

thanks heaps!

Solution

This artical here might help.

When you right-click on the server in the IIS manager and choose "Restart IIS", it executes iisreset. Running iisreset does NOT reset the HTTP stack, it simply unloads and reloads the IIS process.

As a result, believe that iisreset does not reset the W3C service.

Comments

[MrGigu]

Hmm, when you restart "IIS", how do you do it? Right-clicking the website and choosing "Stop", or right-clicking on the server and choosing "Restart IIS"?

[davidsleeps]

typically when just restarting within IIS, I stop the Application pool being used, then restart the website and then start the Application Pool. For locked files or replacing the bin directory, i generally use services.msc to stop the WWW Publlishing service

[joeqwerty]

When stopping the IISAdmin service it warns that it's also going to stop the WWW service and then, in fact stops it. Am I missing something?

[Ryan Ferretti]

Restarting the IISAdmin service is again different than running IISReset from the command line.

[joeqwerty]

Right, misunderstood it in his post that he was stopping it in IIS Manager. Carry on. ;)

[davidsleeps]

sorry for the confusion. in a comment to the question, I answered the method I usually use which is to first stop the application pool...

[joeqwerty]

Thanks for clarifiying it for me. When you stop the application pool and then stop the web site, is there any chance that the application pool is restarting before the web site stops? Any access to the web site before it's stopped will restart the application pool so maybe it's a timing issue. Try stopping the web site first and then the application pool and see if that helps.