Windows Tip: Doing A Full IIS Restart

This morning I needed to install a new version of the oh-so-handy Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter. This plugin is an ISAPI .dll. The instructions for installation are trivial - drop the IsapiRewrite4.dll in a particular directory and you're done.

Upgrading is a bit trickier, because you can't overwrite the existing IsapiRewrite4.dll, as it's in use by the web server.

I'm quite used to dealing with this sort of thing on Linux, but this being Windows, and a production server, I wasn't quite sure the best way to do the upgrade. And, being a production box, I didn't think trial-and-error was the best approach.

I knew I wanted to bring down IIS, do the upgrade and bring it up, but I had visions of shutting it down without the ability to restart it.

I talked to the very nice folks at LiquidWeb who provide the hosting for the server, and they walked me through the procedure:

• Right click on My Computer
• Click on Manage
• Expand the Services and Applications tree
• Click on Services
• Find the IIS Admin Service
• Stop it
• Drop the new IsapiRewrite4.dll in place
• Start the service
• Wait an agonizing 10 seconds
• Check to see if the server is up, if not, wait a few more agonizing seconds

The bottom line is that the important sounding IIS Admin Service controls everything IIS related. And most importantly, starting up the IIS Admin Service will bring everything back up.