IIS - creating new web site throws exception

Question

Running the following code:

DirectoryEntry w3svc = new DirectoryEntry("IIS://localhost/w3svc");
int siteId = GetUniqueSiteId(Path);
private string DEFAULT_WEB_SITE_PHYSICAL_PATH = System.IO.Path.GetPathRoot(Environment.SystemDirectory) + @"inetpub\wwwroot";

object[] newsite = new object[] { "Default Web Site", new object[] { ":80:" }, DEFAULT_WEB_SITE_PHYSICAL_PATH, siteId };

w3svc.Invoke("CreateNewSite", newsite);

throws the following exception:

System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x800700B7): Cannot create a file when that file already exists. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800700B7)

I'm trying to run this code only when "Default Web Site" doesn't exists. The exception is raised only when running in Windows Server 2003. Moreover, when running this code in a loop that retries and sleeps for 1sec after every failure, that code finally works after 3 reties and the default website is created.

Anyone knows what might be the cause?

Answer 1

You are trying to create "Default Web Site" when "Default Web Site" exists. You said yourself it works fine when the website does not exist....