Page Cannot Be Displayed When You Connect Through SSL (260096)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Internet Information Services 5.0
  • Microsoft Internet Information Services version 6.0
This article was previously published under Q260096

SYMPTOMS

When you connect to a computer running Internet Information Services (IIS) by using Secure Socket Layer (SSL), the following error message may occur:
The page cannot be displayed.
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.

This Web site is usually the second Web site on the server. Connecting to the Web site through HTTP works correctly.

CAUSE

This error message can occur if you have SSL set on the default Web site, and you remove the certificate, and then try to set it up on a second Web site.

If you run a netstat -an command, you can see that a service is listening on port 443, but you cannot connect to it. This is caused by a new implementation in IIS versions 5.0 and later called Socket Pooling. For additional information on socket pooling and how to disable it, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

259349 IIS Binds To All Available IP Addresses When It Starts

RESOLUTION

NOTE: For the purposes of this article, two Web sites are installed: the default Web site and the Administration Web site. By default, SSL is enabled on the default Web site.
  1. Open the Security properties for the default Web site, and then select Server Certificate.
  2. In the wizard, click Assign an existing certificate, and then select a certificate from the list.
  3. When you have completed the wizard, click Web site tab, and then click Advanced.
  4. Delete all the entries that are listed in the SSL window.
  5. Click Server Certificate again, click Remove the current certificate, and click OK.
  6. Right-click the computer name in the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), and then click Restart IIS.
You should now be able to connect to the server by using SSL.

WORKAROUND

Restarting the IIS services may resolve the error message. If it does not, follow the steps in the "Resolution" section of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

After SSL is enabled on an IIS Web server, the IIS service begins to listen on all used and unused IP addresses on ports 80 and 443. For multi-IP address servers, you may want to disable this feature. This feature was added the product for performance gain.

This problem usually occurs when you try to set up SSL on the administration Web site. IIS finds the SSL settings for the default Web site and listens on port 443. However, the default Web site does not have a certificate to correspond to that site. Therefore, no connection can be made, which is why you can see a server listening on port 443, but you cannot connect to the site.
Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:6/29/2004
Keywords:kbpending kbprb KB260096
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