Portal site stops responding and you receive a "The page cannot be displayed" or "Cannot find server or DNS error" error message when you access a portal site in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 (827753)

Important This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry

SYMPTOMS

You may experience one or more of the following symptoms when you try to access a portal site on your server farm:

Only portions of the Web pages of your portal site appear in your Web browser, and the portal site stops responding (hangs). For example, graphics and other Web page components are missing from the Web pages in the portal site.
You receive error messages that are similar to the following:
The page cannot be displayed.
-and-
Cannot find server or DNS error.

CAUSE

This problem occurs if both the following conditions are true:

Your server farm either provides or uses shared services.

-and-
A front-end Web server in your server farm contains more than 64 portal sites.

The maximum number of Web sites that are supported on any one server in a server farm that provides or uses shared services is 64.

WORKAROUND

To work around this problem, add the MaxEndpointsDWORD value to the following registry key on the front-end Web server, and then set the value to the number of Web sites (less than or equal to 100) that you want:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HTTP\Parameters

The MaxEndpoints registry value represents both the number of IP (Internet Protocol) address and the port number pairs that are available on the server. Follow these steps to add the MaxEndpoints registry value.

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

Click Start, and then click Run.
In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
Locate, and then click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\HTTP\Parameters
On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
Type MaxEndpoints, and then press ENTER.
On the Edit menu, click Modify.
Under Base, click Decimal, and then in the Value data box, type the number of Web sites that you want, and then click OK.

Important Make sure that you specify a number that is less than or equal to 100.
Quit Registry Editor.
Restart the server.

MORE INFORMATION

The following limits apply to the number of portal sites that are supported on a server farm:

If the server farm is not part of a shared services environment, the server farm supports up to 15 portal sites.
If the server farm either provides or uses shared services, the server farm supports up to 100 portal sites. However, Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) limits the number of Web sites that are running on one server to 64.

For more information about how to administer and configure server farm deployments of Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server, see the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administration Guide. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administration Guide (Administrator's Help.chm) is located in the Docs folder in the root of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 CD.

For more information about SharePoint Portal Server, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/server/default.asp