Step by step, what happens when IIS starts up?

Question

I have a sharepoint site that has problems loading a third party web part. When I reset IIS and then try to load the page, the web part errors out (some kind of initialization error). If I then open the web.config file for that site and immediately save it (without changing anything), I can then load the page ok. This is because when you save the web.config file, it causes IIS to reload the application. It looks like something is not happening during the inital startup of IIS (or maybe some invalid cached information is not clearing). I'm hoping to understand how IIS initializes and that this will help me resolve the issue.

Answer 1

Can you post your web.config file and the actual error as part of your details? It may help some answerers in determining the offending part.

Is your initialization error the "Format of the initialization string does not conform to specification starting at index 0" error?

You can also try Microsoft's Sharepoint Configuration Analyzer tool that analyzes and reports on installation and content. http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/wss/2/all/adminguide/en-us/stswp04.mspx?mfr=true