IIS8 showed error 503

Question

surface pro 2 128GB
Win8.1 update1
intall IIS8 from [Turn Windows Features ON/OFF]

after installing,
1. when visit http:// localhost in IE11， it said Service Unavailable HTTP 503 Error
2. the started DefaultAppPool has auto stopped..

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My question is:
How can I fix this error?

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%windir%\system32\logfiles\httperr:

#Software: Microsoft HTTP API 2.0
#Version: 1.0
#Date: 2014-05-07 03:50:18
#Fields: date time c-ip c-port s-ip s-port cs-version cs-method cs-uri sc-status s-siteid s-reason s-queuename
2014-05-07 03:50:18 ::1%0 1501 ::1%0 80 HTTP/1.1 GET / - 1 Client_Reset DefaultAppPool


#Software: Microsoft HTTP API 2.0
#Version: 1.0
#Date: 2014-05-07 03:51:56
#Fields: date time c-ip c-port s-ip s-port cs-version cs-method cs-uri sc-status s-siteid s-reason s-queuename
2014-05-07 04:07:49 ::1%0 1636 ::1%0 80 HTTP/1.1 GET / 503 1 AppOffline DefaultAppPool
2014-05-07 04:07:55 ::1%0 1637 ::1%0 80 HTTP/1.1 GET / 503 1 AppOffline DefaultAppPool
2014-05-07 04:08:06 ::1%0 1656 ::1%0 80 HTTP/1.1 GET / 503 1 AppOffline DefaultAppPool
2014-05-07 04:08:06 ::1%0 1659 ::1%0 80 HTTP/1.1 GET /favicon.ico 503 1 AppOffline DefaultAppPool
2014-05-07 04:08:06 ::1%0 1660 ::1%0 80 HTTP/1.1 GET /favicon.ico 503 1 AppOffline DefaultAppPool
2014-05-07 04:08:06 ::1%0 1661 ::1%0 80 HTTP/1.1 GET /favicon.ico 503 1 AppOffline DefaultAppPool
2014-05-07 04:12:05 ::1%0 1763 ::1%0 80 HTTP/1.1 GET / 503 1 AppOffline DefaultAppPool

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I found an error in EventLog:

USER: IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool

Windows cannot log you on because your profile cannot be loaded. Check that you are connected to the network, and that your network is functioning correctly.

DETAIL: Only part of a ReadProcessMemory or WriteProcessmemory request was completed

Answer 1

A quick fix:

IIS -> Application Pool -> DefaultAppPool -> Advanced Settings -> Load User Profile = False

Answer 2

The FastcgiTesting-Register may need to be removed from Modules in IIS. More information here:

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vpandey/2009/08/04/http-error-503-the-service-is-unavailable/

Answer 3

After some investigation I found out that in my case the issue was caused due to an application pool account authentication problem. My ASP NET app runs on a Docker container, and within it I create a password free administrative account and configure the application pool for using it.

The catch was that I forgot to set the password expiration policy, and apparently after the default expiration period the issue started occurring whenever the container was restarted. So now I added another command to my script to prevent the password from expiring.

Here is the complete configuration script:

# create admin user
NET USER admin /add
NET LOCALGROUP Administrators admin /add
WMIC USERACCOUNT WHERE "Name='admin'" SET PasswordExpires=FALSE

# configure app pool
Import-Module WebAdministration
Set-ItemProperty IIS:/AppPools/DefaultAppPool -name processModel.identityType -Value SpecificUser
Set-ItemProperty IIS:/AppPools/DefaultAppPool -name processModel.userName -Value "admin"
Set-ItemProperty IIS:/AppPools/DefaultAppPool -name processModel.password -Value ""

Be aware not to run it outside of an isolated container! Since it creates a potentially dangerous password free admin account.