A destabilization of your Web server can occur in several ways, so IIS 5.0 Web server includes a few built-in safeguards. One of these safeguards, IISReset, has two functions. First, every time your Web server crashes, thereby killing the inetinfo.exe process, IISReset automatically restarts the process on the next request, and your Web server gets off to a fresh start. The inetinfo.exe process comprises the IIS Administration Service (IISADMIN), the Web service, SMTP, Gopher, and the FTP service. Second, you can type
iisreset
at the command line to shut down all Web services if they aren’t responding.
If want to root out Web site stability problems on a test server, you can disable inetinfo.exe by running iisreset with the /disable option. When IISReset is enabled, the server automatically restarts after a crash and you won’t be able to collect the failure information you need. Remember to always leave inetinfo.exe enabled if you’re running it in a live environment.