SOVLED! Suffered A Fatal Communication Error With The Windows Process Activation Service

If you experience crashes while using Internet Information Services (IIS) and Event Viewer says something about “…suffered a fatal communication error with the Windows Process Activation Service”, the configuration of the application pool is at fault. The best solution in most of the cases is to tweak settings of the application pool. Aside from that, you may want to take a look at the permission and check out Internet Information Services as well. Read to the end to learn how to carry out the solutions on your own. 

What Might Have Gone Wrong

All in all, quite a few Windows users hold IIS in high esteem for its utility but it remains far from perfect. If you notice Event Viewer logging an entry about “…suffered a fatal communication error with the Windows Process Activation Service”, consider the following suspects. 

• Settings. 
• Permission.
• IIS.

What Needs To Be Done

Tweak Settings Of The Application Pool

• Step 1: Right-click IIS Manager then pick Run as administrator. 
• Step 2: Select Application Pools, choose your app pool and hit Advanced Settings on the Action sidebar.
• Step 3: Change Enable 32-bit applications to False then hit OK.
• Step 4: Restart your computer.
• Step 5: When the screen comes back on, see how things turn out. 

Note: To be thorough, it’s strongly recommended that you inspect the status of Application Pools too.

• Step 1: Open IIS Manager as an administrator. 
• Step 2: Go to Connections pane, expand Server node and hit Application Pools.
• Step 3: In Features View, determine whether Status of your application pool says Started.

Take A Look At The Permission

• Step 1: Press Windows + E to open File Explorer.
• Step 2: Right-click the file or folder that you want to let AppPool users access and pick Properties.
• Step 3: Go to Security tab, pick Edit and hit Add.
• Step 4: Select Location then choose the local machine.
• Step 5: In Enter the object names to select, type IIS AppPool\DefaultAppPool. Feel free to use the name of your application pool to substitute for DefaultAppPool if necessary.
• Step 6: Click Check names then pick OK.

Check Out Internet Information Services

• Step 1: Launch your web browser, visit Microsoft website and download Debug Diagnostics Tool.
• Step 2: Press Windows key, type C:\Program Files\DebugDiag and hit Enter.
• Step 3: Go to Tools, click Create IIS/COM+ Hang Dump, go to Advanced Analysis tab and pick Add Data Files.
• Step 4: Find the dump file that you want to analyze, select it and choose Open.
• Step 5: Click Crash/Hang Analysis on Advanced Analysis tab then pick Start Analysis. Read the report and act accordingly. 

Other Common Questions

What is the purpose of Internet Information Services?

Internet Information Services (IIS), is in essence a web server on Windows systems that serve requested HTML pages or files. For most of the time, IIS web servers accept requests from remote client computers and respond to them appropriately. Windows users could manage their IIS web servers via IIS Manager and use it to share information across networks.

How do I schedule app pool recycling?

• Step 1: Open IIS Manager as an administrator. 
• Step 2: Click Application Pools, pick your app pool and hit Recycling.
• Step 3: Select your preferred option below Fixed Intervals, enter the values and choose Next.
• Step 4: Think a bit about which events you want to log then check the corresponding checkboxes under Configurable recycling events and Run-time recycling events in Recycling Events to Log. 
• Step 5: Hit Finish.

How come Windows Process Activation Service won’t start?

If you have a hard time getting Windows Process Activation Service to start, you should consider applying changes to Windows Registry. 

• Step 1: Press Windows key, type Regedit and press Enter to open Registry Editor. 
• Step 2: Click File then pick Export to create a backup in case you make a mistake.
• Step 3: Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WAS\Parameters
• Step 4: Right-click NanoSetup, pick Delete and restart your computer. 
• Step 5: Press Windows key, type cmd and hit Run as administrator. In Command Prompt (Admin), run the commands down below:
  • net start WAS
  • net start W3SVC