Unable to load the console, "The webpage cannot be found"

Products

• Server Management Suite

Issue/Introduction

Having an issue opening the console, "The webpage cannot be found"

Localhost also would not load.

Environment

Release: 8.x

 

Cause

Windows Process Activation Service not able to start. Because that service is a dependency of the World Wide Web Publishing Service (IIS), IIS would not start. 

Resolution

For this case, we looked at services and found the World Wide Web Publishing Service was not running. When we attempted to start the service, it failed to start due to a dependency. We found that the dependency, Windows Process Activation Service, would not start and threw an error of,  "Error 13: The data is invalid."

We researched that error and found a reference to a possibly corrupt configuration file, applicationHost.config. We found this file at C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\INETSRV\CONFIG, and it had a last modified date of two years ago. We found backups at C:\INETPUB\HISTORY and after renaming the existing config file, we replaced it with one of the backups that were a few weeks old. The services then were able to start, and the console loaded successfully.