Error while Creating Web Application through Central Administration

The article explains about an exception, which I was facing and I thought of sharing this information with the SharePoint society. 

While writing the previous article regarding the various types of creating web applications, I was attempted to create a second web application unknowingly on the same port. i.e., on 443 itself, I tried creating the second web application also. It took a long time than the usual for the creation and after a while, I was seeing the below screen.

i.e., the page will be shown with “Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage” with the title called “Dialog”. This was a very strange one. I was verifying the ULS logs and I couldn’t find any relevant message regarding this. Then, when I refresh the ManageWebApplications page, I was able to see the web application created and listed on it. The corresponding content database and the IIS Website were also created.

Then when I tried creating SiteCollections on this web application, everything was smooth. But only thing is that site collection will not be able to open. I tried creating multiple web applications and site collections. But no luck.

Then the resolution for this, I could see is, this is because of the Application Pool whose “Idle time out property” is by default True. Since, the web application creation process takes a long time, the application pool stops working. We need to change this property. Let us have a look in to it.

1. Go to IIS

2. Select the DefaultAppPool and Go to the Advanced settings.

3. We will be prompted with the below popup.

4. Under the “Process Model” category, Select the “Generate Process Model”, Idle time out reached property would be by default “True”.

5. Make it to “False”.

6. Reset the IIS.

7. Come back to Central Administration and try creating. Now it is getting created and works as expected.

And one more option to create the Web Application and Site collection if this also not works is by using the power shell script. That will be faster than the Central Administration and works fine even if you doesn’t want to make any changes on the IIS.

Hope this will help a lot by the time of creating web application. Happy sharepointing.