HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable. App pool stops on accessing website

Question

There are number of posts on this and I have tried many a things by now. But to no avail. Myself a Winforms Developer basically, started working on this Web stuff few days b

Answer 1

If you have McAfee HIPS and if you see the following error in event viewer application log:

The Module DLL C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\HipIISEngineStub.dll failed to load.
The data is the error.

Then the following resolved the issue in my case: https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB72677&actp=LIST

Quote from the page:

1. Click Start, Run, type explorer and click OK.
2. Navigate to: %windir%\system32\inetsrv\config
3. Open the file applicationHost.config as Administrator for editing in Notepad.

4. Edit the <globalModules> section and remove the following line:
   <add name="MfeEngine" image="%windir%\System32\inetsrv\HipIISEngineStub.dll" />

5. Edit the <modules> section and remove the following line:
   <add name="MfeEngine" />

6. After you have finished editing the applicationHost.config file, save the file, then restart the IIS server using iisreset or by restarting the system.

Answer 2

For anyone coming here with Windows 10 and after updating them to Anniversary update, please check this link, it helped me:

https://orcharddojo.net/blog/troubleshooting-iis-apppool-crashes-status-503-after-windows-10-anniversary-update

In case link goes down: If your Event log shows that aspnetcore.dll, rewrite.dll (most often, but could be others as well) failed to load, you have to repair the missing items.

Here are two specific issues we've experienced so far and how to fix them, but you may bump into completely different ones:

"C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\rewrite.dll" (reference)
    Go to "Programs and Features" (Win+X, F) and repair "IIS URL Rewrite Module 2".
"C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv\aspnetcore.dll" (reference)
    Go to "Programs and Features" (Win+X, F) and repair "Microsoft .NET Core 1.0.0 - VS 2015 Tooling ...".