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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jul 2011
    Location
    Atlanta Area
    Posts
    105

    w3wp.exe process shooting to 100% usage

    I just moved to a VPS, from Shared Hosting, a few weeks ago and have been having CPU Usage and memory problems ever since.

    Here are my specs:
    • Running Windows Web Server 2008 R2
    • 5 GB or Ram + 2 GB virtual
    • SQL Server 2008 r2 database on the same VPS.
    • ASP.net 4.0


    The main problem seems to be with the w3wp.exe process periodically taking up all of the resources. I’m not certain this is the case, but the problem seems to occur when the application pool recycles. It doesn’t happen every time the application pool recycles. That’s the only thing that seems to be related to the w3wp.exe process shooting to 100% usage. The only way to get the site back up is to restart IIS and the application pool. Another strange thing, maybe completely unrelated, is that my disk space usage seems to be increasing at an unusually high rate.

    I’ve tried the following:
    • Change session timeout to 20 minutes instead of 45 minutes.
    • Checked my ASP.Net C# coding
    • Disabled Viewstate and caching on certain popular dynamic pages
    • Indexed all SQL Server 2008 tables.
    • Made sure not pages were in Debug=true mode


    Not sure what is causing this, but again, the only thing that seems to be related to the w3wp.exe process shooting to 100% usage is the application pool recycling…but I’m trying to verify that now.

    Any help anyone can provide is greatly appreciated

    Thanks, Sleep deprived.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    USA, UK, Singapore
    Posts
    3,481
    If this is happening frequently, it means that there is something amiss with your application. Did you try to check event viewer and see if there are any application error logged? I believe you have disabled Rapid Application fail which would allow application pool to stay active in spite of repeated application failures.
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  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2011
    Location
    India
    Posts
    52
    w3wp.exe will be originating from software's you installed on your server. So you need to check it in application level.

    You can check in registry for more errors I believe.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Posts
    2,051
    It seems to be a problem with poor coding. You may install Process Explorer in the server and find out which application pool is processing the worker process. If you have separate application pools for each website, well and good, but if you have a single application pool for all websites, then there is some hard work. Anyways, you can then install IISTracer in the server and find out which URLs are being accessed at the time of the 100% cpu usage. You can dig up further to find out the exact cause of the w3wp.exe consuming 100% CPU.
    Prashant T.

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  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2011
    Location
    Atlanta Area
    Posts
    105
    Quote Originally Posted by Softsys Hosting View Post
    If this is happening frequently, it means that there is something amiss with your application. Did you try to check event viewer and see if there are any application error logged? I believe you have disabled Rapid Application fail which would allow application pool to stay active in spite of repeated application failures.
    Just checked the event viewer (just found it, I'm not an admin) last night and noticed some application errors. I fixed them. We'll see what happens this today. Monday is usually a very busy day for the website. Thanks.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jul 2011
    Location
    Atlanta Area
    Posts
    105
    Quote Originally Posted by markpringle View Post
    Just checked the event viewer (just found it, I'm not an admin) last night and noticed some application errors. I fixed them. We'll see what happens this today. Monday is usually a very busy day for the website. Thanks.
    The strange thing is that there are never application log "errors" only "warnings". The warnings are things that can't be corrected, like hackers probing with wrong query strings or Google trying to access pages using an old url with a colon in it. And again, they are just log "Warnings".

    My application builds in VS 2010 without any error.

    I've just updated R2 to see if that fixes anything. I'll post my findings.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jul 2011
    Location
    Kansas City, MO, USA
    Posts
    35
    Quote Originally Posted by markpringle View Post
    The strange thing is that there are never application log "errors" only "warnings". The warnings are things that can't be corrected, like hackers probing with wrong query strings or Google trying to access pages using an old url with a colon in it. And again, they are just log "Warnings".

    My application builds in VS 2010 without any error.

    I've just updated R2 to see if that fixes anything. I'll post my findings.
    These kind of injections can cause internal problems within the code (string parsing loops that never terminate, database connections or sessions not closing correctly) and could easily cause the kind of behavior you are describing.
    If you have access to modify the application, I would strengthen your input sanitizing and error-checking to make sure that everything exits cleanly every time.
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