How to tell what account WSS is using?

i suggest you read this article before changing the password:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.02.insidesharepoint.aspx

to see the app pool identity, go to IIS and right click on the site->properties->identity

to see the account for the Timer service, on your web front end server, go to services.msc, right click on the windows sharepoint timer service, select properties and look at the Log On tab

What if in IIS 6.0 there is no server (computer name) to select? No Application pools and no web sites. IIS is blank.

My Central Administration Web application shows "Service Unavailable".

if IIS is blank, then you either don't have sharepoint installed or that isn't your web front end server.

i'm assuming you see the sharepoint central admin option in Admin Tools.
if that is the case, and you aren't able to access the site, you may want to try running the sharepoint configuration wizard.  that wizard creates the central admin site in IIS.

also, it sounds like you have some history you need to share regarding your sharepoint environment.  it is not normal to have no app pools or sites in IIS on your web front end server.  what has happened?

The server is a Windows Server 2003 64-bit standard edition. SharePoint 3.0 is installed, but IIS seems to be not installed correctly.

About 4 months ago, I had MOSS running on the server just fine. MySites worked great. IIS was configured and up and running.

Today, when I run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuation Wizard, it says that the World Wide Web Publishing Service failed to start, and chack that IIS is installed correctly.

Many errors in the event application error log:

Event Type:      Failure Audit
Event Source:      MSSQL$SHAREPOINT_MOSS
Event Category:      (4)
Event ID:      18456
Date:            4/13/2009
Time:            2:26:17 PM
User:            NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM
Computer:      STEELHEAD
Description:
Login failed for user 'NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM'. [CLIENT: <local machine>]

Event Type:      Error
Event Source:      Windows SharePoint Services 3
Event Category:      Timer
Event ID:      6398
Date:            4/13/2009
Time:            2:21:23 PM
User:            N/A
Computer:      STEELHEAD
Description:
The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.ApplicationServerAdministrationServiceJob (ID 649ccfe3-f6e7-4051-908f-327e94c86a52) threw an exception. More information is included below.

Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.

Event Type:      Error
Event Source:      Office SharePoint Server
Event Category:      Office Server Shared Services
Event ID:      6641
Date:            4/13/2009
Time:            2:25:41 PM
User:            N/A
Computer:      STEELHEAD
Description:
The SSP Timer Job Distribution List Import Job was not run.

Reason: Logon failure: the specified account password has expired

I was able to get IIS working.

In the Event Log, there were Event IDs like 6482, 7076, and 6398. I found that these are caused by some thread conflict wtih IIS and WSS. http://blog.tylerholmes.com/2008/11/emptyblank-iis-manager-when-sharepoint.html.

So, I stopped the Timer service and restarted IIS. Then, IIS started up fine and I was able to see web sites. Looks I need a patch.

ok, so you can now access your sites...

are you still having a problem or is the problem resolved?

The problem is resolved. The error 6398 stopped as weel. The error 7076 was also frequent and that went away.

Thank you for help on this. Should I delete this question? How should I proceed?

to proceed, select the response that best answered your question and click Accept As Solution.  If more than one response assisted, then click Accept Multiple Solutions.  If none of the solutions assisted, then post the detail of how you resolved the problem yourself, and after posting, go back and select Accept As Solution.

Thanks for helping me getting this fixed.