9.11.2006

IIS Admin service - problem and solution

I ran into a problem with the IIS Admin service on my Windows XP SP2 laptop PC yesterday. After some digging, I found the solution. If you run into the same problem, maybe this information will be helpful.

The first sign of a problem was localhost not responding. I checked to see if the web publishing service was running, which it wasn't. When I tried to start it I got
Error 1068, dependency service or group failed to start.
I checked the IIS Admin service and found it wasn't running, either. When I tried to start that service I got:
Error 13, the data is invalid.
I checked the system event log and found IIS Admin has been failing to start for several reboots. I don't access localhost on this machine very often so I'm not surprised I didn't notice this sooner.

Running sc query iisadmin from the command prompt showed the service stopped with an exit code of 0x8007000d.
SERVICE_EXIT_CODE: -2147024883 (0x8007000d)
A search of the Web for some reference to that exit code turned up a suggestion the problem might be related to the metabase file in windows\system32\inetsrv. I found two files on my machine: MetaBase.bin.beforexmlupg, at about 225KB, and MetaBase.bin at over 2.5MB. A clue was the date stamp on MetaBase.bin was about the same as the date the event log showed the IIS Admin service began failing to run. The other file, MetaBase.bin.beforexmlupg, had an earlier date.

I don't know what MetaBase.bin.beforexmlupg is. I checked another Win XP SP2 machine and it didn't have that file. From its name and date stamp I figured it might be related to a security update I applied on or about that date, but that's pure speculation on my part. A search for that file name on MSDN and TechNet turns up no hits.

I'm no IIS expert, but assuming MetaBase.bin was invalid I moved it to a temporary directory (in case I needed it again) and copied MetaBase.bin.beforexmlupg back to MetaBase.bin. I figured this was risky, but I didn't have a lot to lose at that point. I then started the IIS Admin service: success. I started the web publishing service: success. And of course, localhost was back in business, too.

I certainly can't guarantee this solution will work on other machines or in other situations, but it did work in this case. I'm still searching for more information to find out what caused this problem in the first place.

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19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey...! This solution just worked perfectly for me...

Metabase.bin is in "C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv". I found Metabase.bin (8K) and Metabase.bin.tmp (210K). Renamed .tmp to .bin and everything worked! Solved both Web Publication error 1068 and IIS Admin error 13.

(Note: I'm using XP SP2).

Rafa Vega said...

Awesome! worked perfectly for me. Thanks for publishing this.

Anonymous said...

Thank's for this information

(Windows XP SP2)

I found the file with Metabase.bin (245K)in "WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv" and Metabase.bin.tmp (2654K), then I renamed .bin.tem to .bin,and this problem was solved

Anonymous said...

Thank's, your post perfectly solve this problem

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot i copied the Metabase.bin from another machine and it worked.

Anonymous said...

Thank you. I would have wasted an entire weekend if your post wasnt to come up. The solution works exactly as you have said on XP.

M. Aamir said...

This solution worked for me too. Thanks, for posting this

iamcozithink said...

Big Thanks for posting this!!!
I was in a situation that I cannot reinstall iis as that was a remote host and i would have to go all the way with my WIN XP cd to install IIS to fix this problem. Then I tried the solution given by you. and thank god it worked!!!

Many thanks...

Faith said...

Thanks! Guy that made my ISS back to business! I moved the metadata.bin (probably corrupted) to another foler and when the iss admin started It created a new metadata.bin in the right folder.

Thanks AGAIN!

Anonymous said...

Please add me too to the list. This solution worked for me too. Thanks a ton my friend - Whoever you are and wherever you are !!

xnaame said...

I had the exact same problem described here after installing a hotfix. I simply deleted the Metabase.bin file in C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsrv. This worked great!

Sriram.R said...

You must be an absolute genius. That was a great solution :)

Unknown said...

Thanks. I found this post and quickly fixed my IIS problem.

Ginnungagap said...

Well... I got very very happy when I first saw the post... Unfortunately I only have a Metabase.bin (225KB) file and no "backup" or "beforesomething"...
Thanks anyway... I´ve seen you helped a lot of people.

Anonymous said...

The last time I can't run IIS Admin services. I find the solution to fix it. And found this post solve my problem.

Thanks a lot.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Rick,

This solution also worked fine for me. Thanks for the post.

PckMan said...

I too was able to replace the MetaBase.bin file from another computer and the services started without issue. THANKS.

robert30062 said...

Dude you rock so freaking hard!! This solution worked for me as well. You have good karma coming your way I know it. Thank you very much sir!!


Robert

Anonymous said...

Tahnk You very much-this solution worked to me too. Hovewer, in my case it wasn't the same problem, but idea about Metabase.bin was perfect-I have replaced this file with the same fole from another workstation, and it helped out. Thank You very much for this post!!!