HTTP Error 503, the service is unavailable

Question

I'm really new to setting up web servers in general. I've got IIS 8 on Windows 8, and I'm trying to set up a little site locally, while doing some development. In IIS I choose Add Site, give a name, points to a location where I have a index.html file (I've tried different locations, latest in a c:\inetpub\wwwroot\test -folder) and otherwise use all default settings. However, when I try to browse to localhost I get

HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.

I've verified the pool is started, and I've given IIS_IUSRS Full Control on the target folder

I've search around but not found anything that solved my issue, and there's nothing helpfull in the EventLog or in the C:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\HTTPERR folder

Could anyone tell me what's wrong?

Answer 1

Also check the address bar and make sure the page is in the right location.

This error can be returned instead of the 404 (Page not found). In my case, it was a bad link on the page that didn't have a subfolder included.

Answer 2

Check your application's respective Application Framework Pool - it could be stopped. If it is, start it and check again.

If you're still experiencing issues you can also check out Event Viewer to find the cause of that error in order to troubleshoot more.

Answer 3

It is possible that your domain requires the account used for running the AppPool to have batch logon rights. In which case you will see this same error message. The way you can tell if that is the case, is by looking at the System events in the Event Viewer. There should be an event saying that the account being used with the App Pool has either 'the wrong password or does not have batch logon rights'.

This is why developers quite often use IIS Express on their development machine, since it by passes the batch logon rights issue.

Answer 4

If you have IIS URL Rewriting installed it could be to do with that. I suffered issues after a Windows 10 Update.

This StackOverflow post helped me.

Go to Windows Control Panel > Programs and Features > IIS URL Rewrite Module 2 > Repair.

Answer 5

I ran into the same issue, but it was an issue with the actual site settings in IIS.

Select Advanced Settings... for your site/application and then look at the Enabled Protocols value. For whatever reson the value was blank for my site and caused the following error:

HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable.

The fix was to add in http and select OK. The site was then functional again.

Answer 6

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 this workaround on McAfee.com resolved the issue in my case.

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.