Karmic Code Monkey

I found this in the forums, but it wasn’t super easy to dig out. Hopefully, this post will help someone find things a bit easier.

Symptoms: You can’t access a site on local IIS after installing Visual Studio 2008 IIS on Vista or later.

Event log at Windows LogsSystem will have an entry that reads as follows:

Log Name: System

Source: Microsoft-Windows-WAS

Date: 8/18/2008 2:24:10 PM

Event ID: 5189

Task Category: None

Level: Error

Keywords: Classic

User: N/A

Computer: xxxx

Description:

The Windows Process Activation Service failed to generate an application pool config file for application pool ‘*’. The error type is ‘0’. To resolve this issue, please ensure that the applicationhost.config file is correct and recommit the last configuration changes made. The data field contains the error number.

Event Xml:

<Event xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event”&gt;

<System>

<Provider Name=”Microsoft-Windows-WAS” Guid=”{524B5D04-133C-4A62-8362-64E8EDB9CE40}” EventSourceName=”WAS” />

<EventID Qualifiers=”49152″>5189</EventID>

<Version>0</Version>

<Level>2</Level>

<Task>0</Task>

<Opcode>0</Opcode>

<Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>

<TimeCreated SystemTime=”2008-08-18T19:24:10.000Z” />

<EventRecordID>79948</EventRecordID>

<Correlation />

<Execution ProcessID=”0″ ThreadID=”0″ />

<Channel>System</Channel>

<Computer>xxxx</Computer>

<Security />

</System>

<EventData>

<Data Name=”AppPoolID”>*</Data>

<Data Name=”ErrorType”>0</Data>

<Binary>90040780</Binary>

</EventData>

</Event>

This is caused by SP1 incorrectly updating applicationHost.config. To fix, do the following:

1. Open an administrative command prompt.
2. Type in: notepad %windir%system32inetsrvconfigapplicationHost.config
3. Add this text at /configuration/configSections/sectionGroup[@name=system.applicationHost]/

   <section name=”configHistory” overrideModeDefault=”Deny” />

4. Save applicationHost.config
5. Close Notepad
6. In the administrative command prompt, type in: iisreset /start

For reference, the sectionGroup in applicationHost.config should look like this:

<sectionGroup name=”system.applicationHost”>

<section name=”applicationPools” allowDefinition=”AppHostOnly” overrideModeDefault=”Deny” />

<section name=”customMetadata” allowDefinition=”AppHostOnly” overrideModeDefault=”Deny” />

<section name=”listenerAdapters” allowDefinition=”AppHostOnly” overrideModeDefault=”Deny” />

<section name=”log” allowDefinition=”AppHostOnly” overrideModeDefault=”Deny” />

<section name=”sites” allowDefinition=”AppHostOnly” overrideModeDefault=”Deny” />

<section name=”webLimits” allowDefinition=”AppHostOnly” overrideModeDefault=”Deny” />

<section name=”configHistory” overrideModeDefault=”Deny” />

</sectionGroup>

The original source of some of this information is: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2859933&SiteID=17.