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Martin Brown
Asked: 2011-04-16 09:03:59 +0800 CST

How do you resolve HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable on IIS7?

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I'm getting a 503 error when trying to access the localhost web site on my Windows 7 machine. When I look in the event log I'm getting a load of errors along the lies of:

Windows cannot copy file \\?\C:\Users\Default\{979ea7af-5041-4710-838e-f2a62d4ddad2}\symimv.cat to location \\?\C:\Users\TEMP.IIS APPPOOL.001\{979ea7af-5041-4710-838e-f2a62d4ddad2}\symimv.cat. This error may be caused by network problems or insufficient security rights. 

 DETAIL - Access is denied.

I have not touched the security permission on this DIR, has anyone any idea what might have caused this & how to resolve it? It seems to have started after doing a large number of windows updates last night.

permissions iis iis-7 503-error

2 Answers

  1. It looks like the temp IIS profile that is used (normal for IIS) can't be created. I bet you will have the same issue if you create a new user and try to use it. In other words, the root issue is not related to IIS. I don't know what symimv.cat is, but nothing turns up on a google search. Is that something custom that you or your corporate team have installed?

    In other words, it sounds like something amiss with your default user profile.

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  2. I have managed to fix this. It was caused by the permissions being incorrect on the C:\Users\Default folder and as such the system could not read any of the files in the profile when trying to make a copy. The symimv.cat file was just the first file in the profile and was not significant, when I deleted it the next one in the list started comming up. symimv.cat is part of Norton 360 by the way.

    Does anyone know what the correct default permissions are for C:\Users and C:\Users\Default? I have largly given rights to everyone, which is perhaps not very secure.

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