What is w3wp.exe?

Question

I have a WCF service running under a service user on my local system. Every time I try to debug, it gives me an Attach Security warning message.

In Visual Studio, by default (even without binding) I get this error:

Attaching to this process can harm your computer. If the information below seems suspicious or you are not sure, do not join this process

Name: C: \ Windows \ System32 \ inetsrv \ w3wp.exe

What is w3wp.exe ? According to a Google search, I think this is related to IIS. But what is he doing? What setting should I change so that this does not produce this message every time I try to debug my local system?

Answer 1

The IIS workflow is a windows process (w3wp.exe) that launches web applications and is responsible for processing requests sent to the web server for a specific pool application.

This is a workflow for IIS. Each application pool creates at least one instance of w3wp.exe , and this is what actually handles the requests in your application. It's not dangerous to attribute to this, it's just a standard Windows message.

Answer 2

Chris pretty much sums up what w3wp is. To disable the warning, go to this registry key:

 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Debugger 

And set the DisableAttachSecurityWarning value to 1.

Answer 3

• The workflow runs as an executable file named W3wp.exe

• A workflow is user-mode code whose role is to process requests, such as processing requests to return a static page.

• The workflow is controlled by www service .

• workflows also run application code, such as ASP.NET. XML applications and web services.

• When the application pool receives the request, it simply passes the request to the workflow (w3wp.exe). The w3wp.exe workflow looks up the request URL to download the correct ISAPI extension. ISAPI Extensions is an IIS way to handle requests for different Resources. Once ASP.NET is installed, it installs its own ISAPI extension ( aspnet_isapi.dll ) and adds the mapping to IIS.

• When the workflow loads the aspnet_isapi.dll file, it starts the HTTPRuntime, which is the entry point of the application. HTTPRuntime is a class that calls the ProcessRequest method to start processing.

For more details see URL http://aspnetnova.blogspot.in/2011/12/how-iis-process-for-aspnet-requests.html

Answer 4

w3wp.exe is the process associated with the application pool in IIS. If you have multiple application pools, you will have more than one instance of w3wp.exe. This process usually allocates large amounts of resources. This is important for the stable and safe operation of your computer and should not be stopped.

You can get more information about w3wp.exe here

http://www.processlibrary.com/en/directory/files/w3wp/25761/