Error:

“Unexpected error 0x8ffe2740 occurred”

Not too helpful? This is an error message that IIS spits out when trying to start a website, but cannot because Port 80 is already in use.

From googling this, i’ve learned that Skype frequently listens on that port. If you’re not running Skype, and some other process is stealing Port 80, try this to find out which process.

1. Launch a command prompt by going to start->run->cmd.exe

2. type “netstat -o -a > ports.txt” to dump a list of processes, bindings, and their PID’s to ports.txt

3. type “notepad ports.txt” to open the file. Look for a line with “<hostname>:http” in the left-hand column. (Not the right-hand) Find a line like this:

TCP rbanerjee:http rbanerjee.xxxx.net:0 LISTENING 2700

(my hostname is rbanerjee)

The number on the far right (2700 in my case) is the Process Identifier. You will need this.

4. Launch task manager, by typing “taskmgr” in your command window. Go to the tab entitled “Processes”.

5. If you see a column entitled “PID”, skip to the next step. Otherwise, click”View -> Select Columns”, and put a check box beside “PID (Process Identifier)“. This will show you the PIDs on the next page. Hit OK

6. Find the process with the PID you found before (Mine was 2700) . If you can’t find it, you may try checking “Show Processes from all users”. This can be risky though, because it also exposes system processes.

7. Once you find the matching process, you can decide whether to kill it or exit the process. If it has a familiar name like “Skype.exe” or “CrappySoftware.exe”, you can kill it or gracefully exit, whichever you choose. It won’t affect your system stability. If it is a system process like Svchost.exe or lsass.exe , think twice, close all running applications, then try killing it at your own risk. You probably won’t cause any permanent damage, and will likely only force a reboot.

Right click the process and go to “End Process“. Then go try and start IIS. It should work.

On my computer, the offender is Svchost.exe, a service hosting process. With Process Monitor, i found out that Svchost was hosting a Microsoft tool called WinRM that is used for server administration over the WSMAN protocol. I killed it, no problems.