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You will normally get one w3wp.exe process per AppPoll in IIS, however depending on your appool settings you may have more.
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You will normally get one w3wp.exe process per AppPoll in IIS, however depending on your appool settings you may have more.

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Ok thanks this helped a bit, how can I check the app pool settings?
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Ok thanks this helped a bit, how can I check the app pool settings?

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Can anyone suggest a good article on the above process and how it works. My server has 17 of these open in total so I would like to see if any of them can be killed as they are eating up valuable resource.
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Can anyone suggest a good article on the above process and how it works. My server has 17 of these open in total so I would like to see if any of them can be killed as they are eating up valuable resource.

Multiple IIS Worker Processes - W3wp.exe

IIS is Internet Information Services, the web server included with Windows Server operating systems. All current versions are built on a modular architecture; modules can be added or removed individually so that those required for specific functionality are installed. The full installation of IIS includes HTTP, security, content, compression, caching, logging and diagnostics.

Microsoft IIS Web Server

Windows Server 2003 was based on Windows XP and was released in four editions: Web, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter. It also had derivative versions for clusters, storage and Microsoft’s Small Business Server. Important upgrades included integrating Internet Information Services (IIS), improvements to Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy (GP), and the migration to Automated System Recovery (ASR).

Windows Server 2003

A web server refers to the software that helps to deliver web content that can be accessed either through the Internet or through an intranet. The primary function of a web server is to store, process and deliver web pages to clients. The communication between client and server takes place using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The most common use of web servers is to host websites, but there are other uses such as gaming, data storage, running enterprise applications, handling email, FTP, etc.