PRB: You May Receive a "Server Error" Message When You Try to Access a Windows Rights Management Services Administrative Web Page (831213)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) for Windows Server 2003

SYMPTOMS

When you try to access a Microsoft Windows Rights Management Services (RMS) administrative Web page, you may be redirected to a Web page that displays the following error message:
Server Error
This Web page will also display the following descriptive error message:
Access denied to c:\inetpub\wwwroot\_wmcs\web.config

CAUSE

This problem may occur when you install RMS on a server that has restrictive permissions set on the root directory of the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) Web site and when this Web site receives many user hits.

This problem occurs because an IIS server sets access control lists (ACLs) for the RMS virtual directories in the final step of the RMS provisioning process. When an IIS server is busy, the IIS server may postpone this final step until all the earlier requests have been serviced. When the RMS virtual directories are created, they inherit the permissions that are established for the root directory of the IIS Web site (by default, the C:\Inetpub\wwwroot directory). The RMS provisioning process then modifies these permissions.

If you request an RMS administrative Web page before the IIS server sets the ACLs (so that the RMS Service Group has permissions to the RMS virtual directories), the request is unsuccessful. All later requests for an RMS administrative Web page are also unsuccessful, and you experience the behavior that is mentioned in "Symptoms" section.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, back up your IIS configuration, and then restart IIS.

If you stop or restart IIS, or if you restart your Web server, you may lose application data. When you restart IIS, all sessions that are connected to your Web server are disconnected. This disconnection includes Internet sessions, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sessions, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) sessions, and Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) sessions. You also lose any data in your Web applications.

You cannot access any Web sites until after IIS restarts. Additionally, you may lose changes to the metabase when you restart IIS. To avoid losing metabase changes, and to create a backup of the metabase, use the SaveData method.

Microsoft recommends that you log on to your computer by using an account that is not in the Administrators group, and then use the runas command to run IIS Manager as an administrator.

Important To perform the following procedure, you must either be a member of the Administrators group on your local computer, or you must have appropriate permissions.

To restart IIS by using the iisreset command-line utility, follow these steps:
  1. Click Start, and then click Run.
  2. In the Open box, type cmd, and then click OK. A command prompt appears.
  3. At the command prompt, type the following command, and then click OK:

    iisreset /noforce computername

    Note the following about the command in this step:
    • If you administer an IIS server on a remote computer, replace ComputerName with the NetBIOS name of the computer where you want to restart IIS.
    • If you administer an IIS server on a local computer, you do not have to use the ComputerName parameter.
    • If all IIS services cannot stop within the one-minute timeout period, Microsoft recommends that you use the /noforce option to safeguard against data loss.
    • If you are sure that you can force IIS to restart, you do not have to use the /noforce option.
    IIS tries to stop all IIS services before IIS restarts. The iisreset command-line utility waits up to one minute for all services to stop. If these services do not stop within one minute, IIS terminates these services and then restarts.
Note You can set the timeout period by using the /timeout option for the iisreset command-line utility.

For more information about the options that you can use for the iisreset command-line utility, search for iisreset in Windows Help, or run the following command at the command prompt:

iisreset /?

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:12/3/2003
Keywords:kbACL kbSecurity kbWebServer kbWebFolder kberrmsg kbprb KB831213 kbAudDeveloper
©2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.