: Why is App Pool Identity not created until first request is received? I work for a software company and regularly deploy our web applications on our customers IIS boxes via an install wizard

@Murray432

Posted in: #Iis7

I work for a software company and regularly deploy our web applications on our customers IIS boxes via an install wizard which was developed in-house.

The install process by default creates a new App Pool for the application to run under, which is itself creates/is run under a default IIS App Pool Identity. The final step of the installer is to grant permissions on certain folders to the IIS App Pool Identity.

Recently I've been working in a new customers environment and every time I do a new install this final step fails, as the App Pool Identity doesn't exist. I've found that browsing to the web app and rerunning the installer works as the Identity is created when the first web request is received.

Why is this?

This is unusual behaviour in my experience. I'm guessing this is something related to domain policy but haven't been able to find anything on the subject. As mentioned I can work around it but it would save time if I could get this changed and more importantly, I assume this is deliberate and want to know why!

This is Windows 2008 R2 with IIS 7.5. (I hope I've got my terminology right).

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