IIS help please - I'm stuck with a status code 500-12...

...which means "request cannot be processed while the site is restarting"

[Dreamquick]

If you have any relevant ideas please feel free to make suggestions as this damned error is driving up the wall - not least of all because the site is effectively dead with the message;

<added>
Talked to host (told you they have odd hours - we are both on UK time) and I'm waiting for them to beat IIS into submission with a stick, failing that they suggested that they might need to restart the service/application.

If anyone has any brain-waves about what else I can try while I wait, on account of it not being fixed yet, then I'll happily listen. :)
</added>

The page cannot be displayed
There is a problem with the page you are trying to reach and it cannot be displayed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please try the following:

Click the Refresh button, or try again later; it does not normally take a long time for an application to restart.

Open the evolvedcode.net home page, and then look for links to the information you want.
HTTP Error 500-12 Application Restarting
Internet Information Services

I'm in the middle of writing a note to the hosting guys (since they work even weirder hours than I do), might as well share that since its all about the problem...

The short version is that I've just ftp'd up a new global.asa and for the past 20 minutes all I'm seeing is the 500-12 status code being returned which IIS claims is "The request cannot be processed while the Web site is restarting".

I can still access the FTP site, but the HTTP consistently produces that error...

I must admit this is something I've never encountered before but having watched sites get restarted on quite a few occasions but an hour seems a lot longer than the 30 seconds they normally take to come back to life elsewhere.

[stuff about the url and the instance number which isnt relevant]

The longer version is that I was just copying up large batch of pages, common includes and a new global.asa (previously I never needed one since I wasn't relying on the application or session objects that heavily). Because the common includes were changed drastically nearly every page was being updated.

Eventually it got to a point where I wanted to check if I'd copied everything required but the only thing I can get out of the site is that 500-12 error! I have the exact same scripts running on W2K IIS locally and it has been working perfectly for the past month...

Tried something else - created two new pages - one simple basic ASP, one straight HTML;

http:// example.net/test.html is being served up happily
http:// example.net/test.asp is 500-12'ing

Which points to the ASP engine being the problem rather than the service/site restarting.

Next I read around a little and spotted that the problem can occur if you make a mistake in the global.asa but like I said it's working locally and besides it's not like its attempting anything complex;

<SCRIPT LANGUAGE="VBScript" TYPE="text/vbscript" RUNAT="SERVER">
Sub Application_OnStart()

Application("gbRAudit") = False

Application("gsBotG") = vbNullString
Application("gsBotB") = vbNullString
Application("gsBotI") = vbNullString
Application("gsBotU") = vbNullString

Application("gsBrowser") = vbNullString

Application("gsUnk") = vbNullString

Application("gsIPData") = vbNullString

End Sub
</SCRIPT>

Basically standard app_onstart() which sets up a few strings and a boolean variable. It's not rocket science and I can't see any obvious errors that would cause either errors or hanging...

Next I tried renaming the global.asa to global.txt in the hopes that I could at least get a regular "500.100 - you've broken stuff" error but again the site just sits there with a 500-12!

I even tried to use the hosting controller (v1.4 if it's relevant) to restart the site but if I click restart it cannot get to the next page!

Regards
Tony

[hakre]

reboot the machine. ;-) just making jokes. i think you can't do anything because IIS is very on it's own. so a reboot or a re-setup of the machine might be the best to do.

[Dreamquick]

hakre

The really sad thing is that you're right - the general order of fixing a broken IIS when it starts behaving oddly goes;

Stop & start the website
Stop & start the IISAdmin service
Reboot the machine
Pray to <chosen deity>

It's working now which is all that matters!

In the end the support people at the hosting company said something to the effect of; yeah that is odd, I've only ever seen it happen once before - it's not a perfect solution but if you stop the site before you change the global.asa it's less likely to happen.

- Tony