[thelist] IIS help needed!

[Henry E. Lee, Jr.]

aardvark, thanks for the help.

Some answers for you:

> what's the number code on that error?

A standard 500 I think. Its running now so I dont have confirmation on that,
but it is the typical "page cannot be displayed" message that happens when a
DNS is down. The site is running now, and it is:

http://www.sectorupdates.com/

> what else has happened on that that server?

It is currently being hosted by Dellhost, a dedicated box. They occasionally
mess with it and put up their own admin tools, like big brother stuff, etc,
but outside of that, no applications have been added in a long time. The
site is updated all the time by a content fellow, who doesn't have any clue
on how to script, and wouldn't bother with it.

I do all of the scripting myself, and have written a few complicated ASP
scripts, some that work with databases (access), some that work with the
SMTP, and some that work with DLLs, such as ASPTear. I have stress-tested
those scripts though, and they don't even phase the performance monitor
(RAM, script execution time, etc). I also haven't added anything or changed
anything in many weeks, and this problem is less than a week old.

>  while it is possible for
> a machine to spit it chips and act up, it's unlikely without some
> precipitous event...  is there a script up there that was added
> recently?  some weird unterminating loops?  anything?

I checked the best that I could on that stuff, within reason. There are
hundreds of content pages (no scripts) that the content person puts up and
modifies daily, its a full-time job for him. As for the scripts, no changes
or modifications or additions in several weeks.

> look for all files with a date on or after you first experienced those
> problems (.dll, .asp, etc.) and look at them as well as track down
> the owners... if you have version control, try rolling things back...

Don't have a version control (not 100% sure what one is, but I can do the
math from the name of it :P)

> can i assume you don't have a staging environment?

Unfortunately, this is true. This site is a friend's startup financial site
that he pays for himself.

Thanks again,

Hank