SoftwareCentral · Website setup

Restarting website

Before SoftwareCentral can be started, the website needs to be restarted. You can restart it in Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, or from inside SoftwareCentral.

IIS Manager Restart the site Recycle the application pool Restart SoftwareCentral

1 Restart the site

From the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, restart the site.

IIS Manager, right-click menu on the SoftwareCentral site in the tree, with Manage Web Site open and Restart highlighted.
IIS Manager (an external Microsoft tool). Right-click the SoftwareCentral site, then choose Manage Web Site › Restart.

2 Recycle the application pool

From the Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager, recycle the application pool:

IIS Manager, context menu of an application pool, with the Recycle command circled.
IIS Manager (an external Microsoft tool). Right-click the application pool that SoftwareCentral runs in and choose Recycle....
Local administrator Local admin on the server requires a restart of the web server itself.

3 Restart from SoftwareCentral

You can restart the website from inside SoftwareCentral with the Restart SoftwareCentral button, in the Maintenance section of General Settings, row Restart website.

SoftwareCentral first tries to unload its own application, which restarts it. If that is not allowed on the server, it changes the time stamp of web.config instead. IIS then loads the site again.

All users are disconnected The button disconnects all users, and any operation that is running is terminated. It may cause corrupted data if a process is running. Use it when nobody is working.

4 Best practice

  • Restart when nobody is working. All users are disconnected and running operations are stopped. See General Settings.
  • Restart the website after you change the application pool password. The password is changed in three places, and the website is restarted last. See Configure the application pool.
  • Keep web.config writable for the application pool account. When SoftwareCentral cannot unload itself, the restart from inside SoftwareCentral changes the time stamp of web.config. If that fails, restart the site in IIS Manager instead.

5 Troubleshooting

SymptomCauseWhat to do
The Log shows the critical message "Failed to restart website." SoftwareCentral could not unload its application, and it could not change the time stamp of web.config either. Restart the site or recycle the application pool in IIS Manager, as described above. Check that the application pool account is allowed to change web.config.