A website that keeps on loading always frustrates users.

And, things go for a toss when no error message shows up.

IIS website loading forever happens mainly because of the high resource usage of the application pool or the server.

At Bobcares, we often receive requests to fix website errors as part of our Server Management Services.

Today, let’s analyze the cause for IIS errors and see how our Support Engineers fix it for our customers.

Causes for IIS website loading forever

Let’s get a deeper look at the major causes of the forever loading website.

IIS is a web server from Microsoft that runs on the Windows server. Basically, IIS works based on application pools. These Application pools allow the website to have a separate pool from one another, even though they run on the same server.

1. Lack of resources

Usually, the IIS website loads forever because their available resources are shared with other applications. This mainly occurs when the application has not been used for a while.

Resources sharing is one of the key features of IIS. The website loading forever problem can also happen due to server load.  Therefore, we always recommend server owners to allocate resources based on the type and usage of each website.

2. Server load

The load on the server can also affect the performance of the IIS. This causes the website to load forever.

Here, our Support Engineers first analyze the load on the server from Task Manager. To open Task Manager, we right-click on the taskbar and click on Task Manager. We click on the Performance tab to analyze the CPU usage. Then click on Processes to find the programs that are using high resources.

After identifying the process, we analyze the process that is running on the server. We work on the server to decrease the load on the server.

3. Database process load

Another reason for the website not loading in IIS can be the poor database performance. Sometimes the problem might not be with the web server, but with the database server as well.

The database might be consuming high CPU usage.

Here, we analyze the database processes from the MS SQL server interface.

We open Microsoft SQL Management Studio. Right-click on the instance name and select activity monitor. It will take a few minutes to load and start displaying data.

Now from the activity monitor our Dedicated Engineers analyze the reason for the load and resolve it. We can find the queries that are using high resources from recent Expensive Queries.

How to fix IIS website loading forever

Recently, we had a customer who was facing a problem with his IIS website loading forever. We helped him fix it by disabling idle timeout in IIS.

Let’s discuss how our Support Engineers resolved the error.

Disable idle timeout

One of the most common reasons for the website loading forever is the default idle timeout in the application pool. The operation by default shuts down the application pool after this time.

This happens when the website remains inactive for a while. Since IIS host multiple websites, the idle timeout feature helps to free up the memory. Thus it can allocate the un-used memory for other applications pool that is running in the webserver. Our Support Engineers disable the idle timeout follow these steps.

Click on Start >> Administrative Tools >> Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.

Now select the application pool and right-click on the domain’s application pool. Select the edit application pool and click on Advanced Settings.

Now we set the idle time-out to 0. Setting the idle time-out to 0 will disable the limit.

Finally, for the changes to reflect, we restart the application pool.

That’s it. Now the website starts working fine.

[Need assistance to fix IIS website errors? We’ll help you.]

Conclusion

In short, we have discussed the reasons that make the IIS website loading forever. We also saw how our Support Engineers analyze the error and fix it.