I recently installed IIS7 on a Windows 7 workstation via batch file. The installation went off without a hitch but I was getting no response from http://localhost and a quick inspection of the IIS Manager snap-in showed that all my websites and application pools were stopped. I tried to start the Default App Pool but this is what I got:

Application pool cannot be started unless the Windows Process Activation Service (WAS) is running.

The Service snap-in showed that WAS was not running. When I tried to start it I got:

Error 2: The system cannot find the file specified.

Thanks to Scott Hanselman’s efforts, I found the answer in his article Fixed: “Windows Process Activation Service (WAS) is stopping because it encountered an error.”.

All that was required was to create the folder C:\inetpub\temp\apppools. That’s it!

Once created, start the Windows Process Activation Service and World Wide Web publishing Service and you should be away! Also, make sure they are set with Startup Type, Automatic