What does 'IISReset' do?

Question

On IIS 6, what does an IIS reset do?

Please compare to recycling an app pool and stopping and starting an ASP.NET web site.

If you replace a DLL or edit/rep

Answer 1

Application Pool recycling restarts the w3wp.exe process for that application pool, hence it will only affect web sites running in that application pool.

IISReset restarts ALL w3wp.exe processes and any other IIS related service, i.e. the NNTP or FTP Service.

I think changing web.config or /bin does not recycle the whole application pool, but I'm not sure on that.

Answer 2

IISReset restarts the entire webserver (including all associated sites). If you're just looking to reset a single ASP.NET website, you should just recycle that AppDomain.

The most common way to reset an ASP.NET website is to edit the web.config file, but you can also create an admin page with the following:

public partial class Recycle : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        HttpRuntime.UnloadAppDomain();
    }
}

Here's a blog post I wrote with more info: Avoid IISRESET in ASP.NET Applications

Answer 3

IISReset restarts the entire webserver (including all associated sites). If you're just looking to reset a single ASP.NET website, you should just recycle that Application Domain.

Answer 4

You can find more information about which services it affects on the Microsoft docs.