500 Internal Server Error – How To Troubleshoot and Fix

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Hello and Welcome to our new blog. Today we will try to how to fix 500 Internal Server Error as a System Administrator.

how to fix 500 internal server error
how to troubleshoot HTTP error 500 in IIS

If you a System Admin or IIS Admin and you get HTTP Error 500 for one of the hosted websites in IIS, then you are at the right place. As today we are going to discuss the cause and resolution for this error which worked for us. Stay Tuned.

Please follow the below troubleshooting steps to resolve this problem.

1. Identify Exact 500 Internal Server Error Code.

In the case of IIS, there may be multiple error codes related to HTTP error 500. Please find below the detailed list and their possible cause:

  • 500.0: Module or ISAPI error occurred.
  • 500.11: Application is shutting down on the web server.
  • 500.12: Application is busy restarting on the web server.
  • 500.13: Web server is too busy.
  • 500.15: Direct requests for global.asax are not allowed.
  • 500.19: Configuration data is invalid.
  • 500.21: Module not recognized.
  • 500.22: An ASP.NET httpModules configuration does not apply in Managed Pipeline mode.
  • 500.23: An ASP.NET httpHandlers configuration does not apply in Managed Pipeline mode.
  • 500.24: An ASP.NET impersonation configuration does not apply in Managed Pipeline mode.
  • 500.50: A rewrite error occurred during RQ_BEGIN_REQUEST notification handling. A configuration or inbound rule execution error occurred.
  • 500.51: A rewrite error occurred during GL_PRE_BEGIN_REQUEST notification handling. A global configuration or global rule execution error occurred.
  • 500.52: A rewrite error occurred during RQ_SEND_RESPONSE notification handling. An outbound rule execution occurred.
  • 500.53: A rewrite error occurred during RQ_RELEASE_REQUEST_STATE notification handling. An outbound rule execution error occurred. The rule is configured to be executed before the output user cache gets updated.
  • 500.100: Internal ASP error.

Now the question arises, how will you identify the exact code from the above list that your site is throwing. Please follow the below steps to see what 500 error from the above list is causing issue to your website.

  1. Log in to Windows Server where IIS is installed.
  2. Open IIS Manager by typing inetmgr in Run.
  3. Expand the tree in the left pane and select Default WebSite.
  4. Right-click on Default Web Site and Click on Browse.
  5. It will try to load the page in default Internet Explorer on the server itself.
  6. This is the place where it will show the exact 500 error code which is causing the issue.
  7. In our case, it was HTTP 500.19 Error Code. Something like below:
500.19 internal server error
http error 500.19 in IIS

2. Troubleshooting

Now you have got the exact error code. Now its time to troubleshoot the error. As per the above list, the HTTP Error 500.19 error code means you have some error in one of the config files. This can be your web.config file also. The web.config is the file that contains all the configuration data for your website for e.g. XML Codes, Authentication Infomation, Authorized account information which is required to run the AppPool and load the website correctly. In our case, it was the Application team who recently changed the password for one of the service accounts from the backend which was configured in AppPool. This resulted in Authentication failed as per the web.config file.

3. Resolution

After we get the root cause that the password which we are using inside AppPool, has been changed from the backend. Now it was pretty clear that to solve this issue, we have to change the password in App Pool now. Which we went ahead and changed the password to the current one. Please make sure, you restart the Server after any activity related to IIS especially in these types of changes. the only iisreset is not sufficient (as per my personal experience). After Server Reboot, our website started working again !! Hope this will help you to understand the exact cause and solve your issue. This was all in today’s How To Fix 500 Internal Server Error. See you in the next article.

Source : Microsoft

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