Modifying Your ISAPI DLL

If your application is running in-process, then IIS locks your ISAPI DLL in memory. This means that you can t change your ISAPI DLL without stopping and restarting your Web server. You can stop and then start your Web server from the ISM tool using the toolbar buttons and menu commands provided, or by running the command-line tool(s) provided, or by manually stopping and starting the Web server service. Sometimes even if you aren t running in-process it s useful to reset IIS in order to have other settings take effect and to aid in debugging.

The main tool for stopping and restarting a Web server is iisreset.exe. This command-line utility will attempt to stop the Web server and then restart it (the inetinfo process).

To manually stop and restart the service, you ll want to use the net stop and net start commands on the w3svc service ( net stop w3svc and net start w3svc ). You could always use a front-end to these commands, such as Server Explorer, which is provided in the Visual Studio .NET shell.

You can set (on a project-by-project basis) whether or not you want to reset IIS in the project settings if you re developing in the Visual Studio .NET integrated development environment (IDE).

Tip  

Often if you re having strange , unpredictable, and inexplicable problems with your Web server, stopping and restarting the IIS process can resolve them.