IIS : What directories generate app restarts when files are changed?

Question

I am aware that any change to ANY file in the BIN directory will trigger an application restart in IIS. Are there any other "special" cases where changing a file or moving a file in any other directory will trigger an app restart?

Answer 1

I know this is a very old post, but may be helps someone: See this: http://programming360.blogspot.com/2009/04/what-causes-application-restart.html

ASP.net run-time environment implements a good deal of checks and automatically restarts an application if any of the following scenarios occur:

• The maximum limit of dynamic page compilations is reached.

• The physical path of the Web application has changed, or any directory under the Web application folder is renamed.

• Changes occurred in global.asax, machine.config or web.config in the application root, or in the Bin directory or any of its subdirectories.

• Changes occurred in the code-access security policy file, if one exists. Too many files are changed in one of the content directories. (Typically, this happens if files are generated on the fly when requested.)

• Changes occurred to settings that control the restart/shutdown of the ASP.NET worker process. These settings are read from machine.config if you don't use Windows 2003 Server with the IIS 6.0 process model. If you're talking full advantage of IIS 6.0, an application is restarted if you modify properties in the Application Pools node of the IIS manager.

Answer 2

If you change the web.config you app domain should also be reloaded and assemblies flushed.