Hello,

I have an interesting situation that has been resolved, but I’m wondering if it’s a known issue and I’m just now figuring it out.

I’ve noticed that with the NET handler, any change to files in the BIN folder would result in the server EXE(s) unloading. Those changes included adding new files, deleting files, renaming files, etc. If any of those actions occur to files in the BIN folder, the server EXE(s) unloads. Not sure if that’s a result of my configuration somehow, but I doubt it as I have 6 Web Connection installations over 3 different server boxes and the behavior is the same for them all.

Anyway, my main, now-resolved problem was that I had issues with the NET handler unloading the server EXEs after every hit to the site for some reason (I’ve posted about it here a couple of times), and was unable to figure it out and so was forced to use the ISAPI handler. But, I think I realized the reason my NET handler-based sites were unloading after every hit… those sites were using the NET handler and also had local (DBF) session and request log tables. When I switched them to SQL Server tables, the servers no longer unload after each hit anymore. I’m guessing the changes to the file size of the session table and/or request log tables, both in the BIN folder, were causing the servers to unload, just as making any other change to files in that folder will.

Anyway, not sure if this may be helpful to anyone, but I found it interesting.

No that's normal - ASP.NET detects changes to the binaries and restarts the application pool when a change is detected. This is by design as it allows you to update applications as they are running.

Incidentally that functionality was removed in ASP.NET Core and it's been a huge hassle because you essentially have to completely take a site offline to redeploy binaries.

+++ Rick ---