Win 2003 Server / IIS6 / Server Application Unavailable

[Damon Roberts]

Hi

My dev server has started posting a Server Application Unavailable error for
all of my asp.net web apps...

Server Application Unavailable
The web application you are attempting to access on this web server is
currently unavailable. Please hit the "Refresh" button in your web browser
to retry your request.

Administrator Note: An error message detailing the cause of this specific
request failure can be found in the application event log of the web server.
Please review this log entry to discover what caused this error to occur.

When I check the event log as requested - I get the following event ...

The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( .NET Runtime ) cannot be
found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or
message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able
to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and
Support for details. The following information is part of the event: .NET
Runtime version 1.1.4322.2032- Config parser error: Error parsing
C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322\confi g\machine.config
Parser returned error 0x80070005.

IIS will server up static & asp pages without any trouble. My
machine.config file does not appear to have changed (i've windiff'd it
against a back up copy) and this server is NOT a primary domain controller.

Advice would be extremely well received beleive you me!

Thanks

Damon

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Damon,

Welcome to ASP.NET newsgroup.
From your description, on one of your Win2003 server, all the ASP.NET web
applications are unable to get start, always return "Server Application
Unabailable" error and the eventlog indicate that there is something
incorrect within the machine.config, yes?

Based on my experience, some former issues which have the similiar symptom
were mostly caused by machine.config being corrupted or access permission
of the asp.net's worker process identity not enough. So currently I think
we can try the following things first:

1. Running filemon on the server when try starting a certain ASP.NET web
app to see whether there are any access failed error in filemon related to
asp.net's config files. Also, we can switch the asp.net app pool's process
identity to
Local System and run it to see whether the error still occur.

2. Though you've mentioned that you've try replacing the machine.config
with a backup one, I still recommed that you try copy a new version from
another healthy server which has the same environment if possible.

If there're any other findings, please also feel free to post here. Thanks,

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
(This posting is provided "AS IS", with no warranties, and confers no
rights.)

[Damon Roberts]

Hi Stephen

Thanks for that. I used filemon, and true enough the (w3wp.exe via the)
NETWORK SERVICE account is getting ACCESS DENIED on the machine.config file
while attempting an OPEN request.

What can I do to rectify this?

Thanks

Damon

"Steven Cheng[MSFT]" wrote:

Hi Damon,

Welcome to ASP.NET newsgroup.
From your description, on one of your Win2003 server, all the ASP.NET web
applications are unable to get start, always return "Server Application
Unabailable" error and the eventlog indicate that there is something
incorrect within the machine.config, yes?

Based on my experience, some former issues which have the similiar symptom
were mostly caused by machine.config being corrupted or access permission
of the asp.net's worker process identity not enough. So currently I think
we can try the following things first:

1. Running filemon on the server when try starting a certain ASP.NET web
app to see whether there are any access failed error in filemon related to
asp.net's config files. Also, we can switch the asp.net app pool's process
identity to
Local System and run it to see whether the error still occur.

2. Though you've mentioned that you've try replacing the machine.config
with a backup one, I still recommed that you try copy a new version from
another healthy server which has the same environment if possible.

If there're any other findings, please also feel free to post here. Thanks,

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
(This posting is provided "AS IS", with no warranties, and confers no
rights.)

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Damon,

So there must be something incorrect with your machine, is there any big
changes or accidents on your machine recently? Anyway, I think you can
first grant the required permissions for that file to Network Service
account to see what'll happen. If any new findings, please feel free to
post here.

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
(This posting is provided "AS IS", with no warranties, and confers no
rights.)

[Damon Roberts]

Hi Steven

We gave the ASPNET account access to machine.config and the NETWORK SERVICE
account appeared to be then added by default. ASP.NET web applications now
function again.

Very strange ... we can not isolate what could have happend on the server
that would have forced the loss of privileges on machine.config. Are there
any other locations that we should check for correct access/privileges - I'm
concerned that we'll hit related issues during future development.

Thanks for your help on this matter.

Damon
"Steven Cheng[MSFT]" wrote:

Hi Damon,

So there must be something incorrect with your machine, is there any big
changes or accidents on your machine recently? Anyway, I think you can
first grant the required permissions for that file to Network Service
account to see what'll happen. If any new findings, please feel free to
post here.

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
(This posting is provided "AS IS", with no warranties, and confers no
rights.)

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi Damon,

I did always see some other ones encountering the similiar problems and the
cause are different from each other. But one common cause is some
Anti-virus software or other 3rd party tools that corrupte the existing ACL
of the asp.net's required resources such as machine.config file or the
temporary folder. You can also have a check on this.

Thanks,

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
(This posting is provided "AS IS", with no warranties, and confers no
rights.)

[cms123]

Hi Steven,

I get same error but I do not get anything from event log. And I can not
open or create .net project I get "'HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error',
received when attempting to create or open an ASP.NET application". I reload
..net visual studio many times. but I get some error.
I did following step but it do not solve my problem also.
1. iisreset /stop
2. net user ASPNET /delete
3. aspnet_regiis -i (C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.1.4322)
4. iisreset /start

I checked iis setting I have application name created.

Could you give me any other suggestion?

Thanks for help;

cms123
"Steven Cheng[MSFT]" wrote:

Hi Damon,

Welcome to ASP.NET newsgroup.
From your description, on one of your Win2003 server, all the ASP.NET web
applications are unable to get start, always return "Server Application
Unabailable" error and the eventlog indicate that there is something
incorrect within the machine.config, yes?

Based on my experience, some former issues which have the similiar symptom
were mostly caused by machine.config being corrupted or access permission
of the asp.net's worker process identity not enough. So currently I think
we can try the following things first:

1. Running filemon on the server when try starting a certain ASP.NET web
app to see whether there are any access failed error in filemon related to
asp.net's config files. Also, we can switch the asp.net app pool's process
identity to
Local System and run it to see whether the error still occur.

2. Though you've mentioned that you've try replacing the machine.config
with a backup one, I still recommed that you try copy a new version from
another healthy server which has the same environment if possible.

If there're any other findings, please also feel free to post here. Thanks,

Steven Cheng
Microsoft Online Support

Get Secure! www.microsoft.com/security
(This posting is provided "AS IS", with no warranties, and confers no
rights.)