I have 2 COM instances running, but sometimes a couple of file-based instances pop into existence and linger. The most recent time it happened, there were about 5 page hits within a second or two - must have been a bot.

How might that have spawned file-based instances? I thought they'd just sit in IIS until one of the COM instances was ready to serve it. What should I look for?

I tried hitting the same group of pages manually, but I'll create code to hit them all at once to test further.

Advice welcomed.

My guess: another application that's set up in File mode and launching those exes?

Or is your admin page not protected (if you are running a pre-6.0 version)? And something is actually switching you out of COM mode and back. That would be scary... Make sure the admin pages are protected.

Other than that I've never seen file instances popping up in COM mode. Not really possible because the server uses different objects in COM and File mode to instantiate servers so unless the configuration flags are pointing at file based, only the COM loader is actually being activated.

+++ Rick ---