Solved IIS stopped to work after I turn it ON, OFF and ON again

[yankleber]

This is the second time it happens in the last few days. The other time I 'solved' the problem by restoring my whole Windows partition from a backup image file as I couldn't figure out any other way. Anyway, if it helps, I see a pattern here because the problem happened exactly the same way both times after I turn IIS on, off and on again.

I first turned IIS on, rebooted my computer and everything was fine with IIS working normally. I made a few tests, turned IIS off again and used my computer for a few days.

Today I turned IIS back on again and when I tried to use it I noticed that it was ruined again. These are the issues I ran into:

1) I cannot reach localhost anymore from my browser. Now it says 'This site can’t be reached - localhost refused to connect.' and throws the 'ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED' error.

2) The IIS Manager won't show up in the 'Administrative Tools' list anymore, however I still can open it by typing 'inetmgr' in the search box.

3) On the IIS Manager there is not any site under the folder 'Sites'. The first time I turned IIS on there WAS a site there (the default one). Anyway, then I right-clicked it and choose 'add a website'. It opened the form but regardless I fill in all the fields the OK button remained greyed out.

The funny part is that the application pool field appear blank as I think it should have 'DefaultAppPool' there. Also the binding type also appear blank as I think it should have at least the 'http' and 'https' options.

Any clue on how to make it work other than restoring my Windows partition?

Thanks!

 

[yankleber]

OK, since I didn't want to restore my Windows partition at this time, I found good enough alternative solutions for my problem.

As I needed to make a video showing up how to use IIS (I record coding classes) I installed temporarily a new instance of Windows 7 using VMWare and activated IIS on it.

Now for my daily use I found a cool and simple free web server called Fenix (fenixwebserver.com). No BS. It simply works. All that you have to do is to install it and then virtualize your server -- just set the name, the port number, point to the folder where your files are and you are done. Your browser will listen to it on IP 127.0.0.1.

Not to be used for publish a website but the perfect tool for whose need just a local server for code testing!