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IIS reset issue (Restart attempt failed)

Nedim's avatar
Nedim
Icon for Microsoft rankMicrosoft
Nov 25, 2019

You may run into “Restart attempt failed” error while trying to restart IIS:

 

Restart attempt failed. The IIS Admin Service or the World Wide Web Publishing Service, or a service dependent on them failed to start.

 

Solution

IIS depends certain other services to host web applications. The root cause of this issue is a failed dependent service as the error above states. Check if the services below are running in IIS server:

  • World Wide Web Publishing
  • IIS Admin Service
  • Net.Msmq Listener Adapter
  • Net.Tcp Listener Adapter
  • Net.Pipe Listener Adapter
  • Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service
  • Messaging Queuing
  • W3SVC Service

In my case, Net.Msmq Listener Adapter service was not running. I saw this error when I tried starting it:

 

The message below was logged in Event Viewer,:

The Net.Msmq Listener Adapter service depends on the following service: msmq

 

MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queuing) is a messaging protocol that applications use to run on separate servers and processes. Net.Msmq Listener Adapter uses this protocol to receive activation requests. It then passes them to Windows Process Activation Service (WAS). For more details about this listener adapter and protocol, check out MSMQ Activation.

 

Follow the steps below to install Message Queuing.

  1. Go to “Server Manager > Manage > Add Roles and Features Wizard”
  2. Click “Next” until “Server Roles” section
  3. Select “Message Queuing”
  4. Click “Next” and “Install”

 

Once  the installation is completed, start Net.Msmq Listener Adapter service again. It should start without issues. Then try iisreset again.

Published Nov 25, 2019
Version 1.0
  • SlowCyclist80's avatar
    SlowCyclist80
    Copper Contributor

    Thank you, this solved an issue for me after an in place upgrade of Server 2019 to 2022 with SCCM getting broken.

  • JonP2's avatar
    JonP2
    Copper Contributor

    Thanks for this, pulling my hair out, turned out to be 

    • IIS Admin Service

    Like you mentioned at the beginning.  Thanks Nedim