Configure Automatic Startup for an Application Pool (IIS 7)

  • Article

Applies To: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista

You can configure the Windows Process Activation Service (WAS) to automatically start an application pool when the application pool is created or when IIS is started. If you disable automatic startup of an application pool, you must start the application pool manually. Disabling automatic startup is useful when you want to make configuration or content changes to an application in the application pool before the application pool starts.

Important

When an application pool is not started, requests made to applications in the application pool will return an HTTP 503-Service Unavailable error.

Prerequisites

For information about the levels at which you can perform this procedure, and the modules, handlers, and permissions that are required to perform this procedure, see Application Pools Feature Requirements (IIS 7).

Exceptions to Feature Requirements

  • None

To configure automatic startup for an application pool

You can perform this procedure by using the user interface (UI), by running Appcmd.exe commands in a command-line window, by editing configuration files directly, or by writing WMI scripts.

User Interface

To use the UI

  1. Open IIS Manager. For information about opening IIS Manager, see Open IIS Manager (IIS 7).

  2. In the Connections pane, expand the server node and click Application Pools.

  3. On the Application Pools page, click to select an application pool from the list.

  4. In the Actions pane, click Basic Settings.

  5. On the Edit Application Pool dialog box, select Start application pool immediately if you want the application pool to automatically start, or clear it if you do not want the application pool to automatically start, and then click OK.

Command Line

To configure whether to automatically start an application, use the following syntax:

appcmd set config /section:applicationPools /[name='string'].autoStart:true|false

The variable string is the name of the application pool that you want to change. For example, to disable automatic startup for an application pool named Marketing, type the following at the command prompt, and then press ENTER:

appcmd set config /section:applicationPools /[name='Marketing'].autoStart:false

For more information about Appcmd.exe, see Appcmd.exe (IIS 7).

Configuration

The procedure in this topic affects the following configuration elements:

autoStart attribute of the <add> element under <applicationPools>

For more information about IIS 7 configuration, see IIS 7.0: IIS Settings Schema on MSDN.

WMI

Use the following WMI classes, methods, or properties to perform this procedure:

  • ApplicationPool.AutoStart property

For more information about WMI and IIS, see Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) in IIS 7. For more information about the classes, methods, or properties associated with this procedure, see the IIS WMI Provider Reference on the MSDN site.

See Also

Concepts

Managing Application Pools in IIS 7