I know this is quite an old post, but I would like to point out the following for people who will read it in the future: As per MS:
Do not use the IISReset.exe tool to restart the IIS services. Instead, use the NET STOP and NET START commands. For example, to stop and start the World Wide Web Publishing Service, run the following commands:
- NET STOP iisadmin /y
- NET START w3svc
There are two benefits to using the NET STOP/NET START commands to restart the IIS Services as opposed to using the IISReset.exe tool. First, it is possible for IIS configuration changes that are in the process of being saved when the IISReset.exe command is run to be lost. Second, using IISReset.exe can make it difficult to identify which dependent service or services failed to stop when this problem occurs. Using the NET STOP commands to stop each individual dependent service will allow you to identify which service fails to stop, so you can then troubleshoot its failure accordingly.