problem with win2k3 and KB973917 (Service Unavailable in IIS)

i just figured that i would post about a recent problem that i had with my web server and a recent windows update (kb973917). my web server runs windows server 2003 standard and IIS 6.0. i patched my server yesterday like usual with the latest updates, asked to reboot so i did.

when my server came back up, none of my web sites would come up. they all went to the error message 'service unavailable'. i did some searching around and the application pools on my server kept crashing when i would try to access one of my websites. so i figured i would remove the updates and install them one by one since everything was working fine right before the updates.

turns out that it was KB973917. after figuring out what the problem was, i did a google search for that update and the 'service unavailable' message and came up with this:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=2009746

turns out it was something that i did to cause it. what i had done is that i had win2k3 installed, updated to sp2 and then installed additional services like IIS, etc. when windows asked for my i386 folder, i pointed it to my install cd which happens to be a win2k3 sp1 iso. this caused windows to install older version of some files. while this worked fine for a while, the KB973917 update broke things.

so basically the solution for me was to reinstall sp2 and then apply the rest of my windows updates. after that, no more error due to KB973917. to prevent this problem in the future, i extracted the new sp2 i386 folder from the service pack 2 update using 7zip and i will just make sure to use that folder in the future when windows needs files from the i386 folder. hopefully this might come in handy for someone who is having a similar problem.

Thanks for posting this.


When MS OS gets old, they seem to start releasing "updates" that do exactly what you described.

They did it with ancient Windows Me update that seemed to have the purpose of forcing the few remaining holdouts to abandon it and upgrade.

c627627 said:

Long after most people switched to Windows XP, this was one of the last updates released for Windows 98/Me:


Windows update installs KB891711.exe and KB918547.exe patches that are run *every time* Windows 98/Me boots.

They slow the system down significantly and result in frequent errors saying "There is not enough memory to run this program..." or "Insufficient memory to run this application; close one or more Windows applications and try again."

Start Menu > Run... > msconfig
to disable them from running at startup.


KB891711.exe addresses a "Vulnerability in cursor and icon format handling could allow remote code execution" and KB918547.exe addresses a "Vulnerability in the Graphics Rendering Engine could allow remote code execution"


The protection may not be worth it if the system slows down significantly with frequent "Insufficient memory" errors that have nothing to do with the amount of available RAM or other resources but are a direct side effect of these patches. Using Windows search may also slow down the system to the point of being unusable if these two .exe files are run at startup.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;891711
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;918547

Click to expand...