Your application pools may stop working and throw “HTTP 503 The service is unavailable” error with this description: “Trying to read configuration data from file ‘\\?\<EMPTY>’, line number ‘0’“. This issue generally happens after installing updates or making configuration changes in your server.
This error is displayed in Event Viewer with the event ID 2307:
The worker process for application pool X encountered an error ‘Cannot read configuration file due to insufficient permissions’ trying to read configuration data from file ‘\\?\EMPTY’, line number ‘0’. The data field contains the error code.
This issue occurs because of the problems happened while creating the virtual directory and application pool. Missing config files that might have been removed somehow could be another possible cause (possible suspect: Antivirus).
A few things to try to solve this issue:
C:\inetpub\temp\apppools
). This will require restarting the machinetemp\apppools
folder. Define an exception for this folder if needed. IIS_IUSRS
has Read access on application folders which are referenced by virtual foldersIIS_IUSRS
has access for C:\inetpub\temp
folderchkdsk
in Command Prompt and make sure fix the issues foundYou must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.