Web sites and Web applications depend on the availability of Internet Information Services (IIS) application pools. IIS application pools in turn depend on the Windows Process Activation Service (WAS). If WAS is not running or errors occur during the startup or shutdown of an application pool, Web sites and Web applications may not be available.

Possible resolutions include the following:

• Use the Debug Diagnostics tool to determine the cause of the crash.

• Examine the event log message details for an error number that can provide additional information about the cause of the error. This error number will be different from the Event ID.

Use the Debug Diagnostics tool

To use the Debug Diagnostics tool, see the article How to use the Debug Diagnostics tool to troubleshoot an IIS process that stops unexpectedly.

Examine the event log message details for an error number

To examine the event log message details for an error number that can provide additional information:

• In the Event Viewer, select the event that you received.

• Click the Details tab, then Friendly View.

• If a specific error number is available, the words Binary data: should appear.

• Below In Words, note the number after the colon.

Learn more about a specific error number

To learn more about a specific error number:

• Download the Err.exe utility from the Microsoft Exchange Server Error Code Look-up page.

• Open an elevated Command Prompt window. Click Start, point to All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.

• At the command prompt, navigate to the directory where you downloaded Err.exe. For example, if you downloaded Err.exe to C:\Err, type cd C:\Err.

• Type err errornumber to obtain more information about the error. For example, if the specific error number is 80070005, type err 80070005.

• In the example in Step 4, the error resolves to ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED, so your next step would be to check for a permissions issue.