What happens when I save changes to web.config with a live app?

Question

What happens when I save a change to web.config while the application is live? The reason I ask is that I'm working on a site/webapp right now which is built on top of an e-commerce platform. At seemingly random intervals, the site will stop responding. The process for the app pool is normal (no ridiculous memory or CPU usage when this happens). When I make a small change to web.config--such as adding a space or deleting a space, and then saving--the site seems to come back. I think by learning more about the sequence of events AFTER the save, I can narrow down the potential causes of my problem.

Edit: I should mention we're running on IIS 6.

Answer 1

This is the expected behavior. The AppDomain it's running on ceases to take new work, and a new one is started.