You'd like to know if it's hung or if it is in fact doing something that you just can't detect at the moment. In this first scenario, imagine that you have a process running, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything. In this tip I'll show you how to actually use some of its features in diagnosis. I introduced this tool in the tip titled Understanding Process Monitor. If you’d like know how to perform IIS error tracing for your Windows web servers, feel free to contact us.Process Monitor from Sysinternals is a great diagnostic tool when you want to figure out what is going on with process and/or files. Right-click on the relevant event, and select properties to see the reason for the error. You can see a list of what and all happened during the time when the site was accessed. Once the loading of webpage is done, turn of “Capture”Ĩ. Keep the website you want to trace ready in the browser.ħ. Turn off “Capture” (Ensure the Red Cross mark on the Capture icon)Ĥ. Customize your filter options based on the error you are investigating.ģ. How to use process monitor to capture the eventsĢ. You can either use the “Drop filtered events” option to capture only the events you want, or just run the capture for a very short time as explained below. Note: It is very important to note that Process monitor is resource hungry! Never leave the “Capture” ON with the default settings as this could easily lead the server to go down. Now, right-click on the event, and select “Properties” to find out exactly what’s causing the error. The log will then display which process tried to access the file. It has a convenient filter option, which you can customize to focus on only those events related to the domain or status you are investigating.įor example, if you have an “Access is denied” error, put a filter on the domain file path, and further focus with the status. Process monitor can be used to capture what happens in the back-end when you access a web page in the browser. Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. The IIS errors may not be very descriptive, and the log files may not contain all necessary information.įor such cases, we use Microsoft Process Monitor to exactly pin point what is causing the error. We’ve seen that, in Windows dedicated servers and VPS, users sometimes request assistance in troubleshooting HTTP errors. In our role as Outsourced Tech Support for web hosts, trouble-shooting and maintaining IIS web servers is something our engineers do on a regular basis.

Sysinternals process