A Deadlock Condition Seems to Occur in ASP.NET When the Server Is Under Heavy Browse Stress

During periods of heavy browse stress, or when you perform stress tests on the browser functionality of Microsoft Outlook Mobile Access, you may seem to experience a deadlock condition in the ASP.NET process. In this seeming deadlock condition, the server stops responding to client requests, and the process restarts.

This behavior occurs because the length of time that is specified by the responseDeadlockInterval value in the Machine.config file is reached. By default, this value is set to 3 minutes. In this default situation, if the server does not send a response to the Outlook Mobile Access client in 3 minutes or less, ASP.NET assumes that a deadlock condition exists and restarts the process.

This behavior may occur on computers that have slower processors or less memory that leads to situations where the server takes longer than is specified by the responseDeadlockInterval value to send a response.

To resolve this behavior, increase the length of time that is specified by the responseDeadlockInterval value in either the Machine.config file or in the Web.config file. To do so, use one of the following methods that is appropriate to your situation.

Edit the Machine.config File

To modify the responseDeadlockInterval value in the Machine.config file:

1. Start Windows Explorer, and then locate and click the following folder:
   SystemRoot\Microsoft.NET\Framework\VersionNumber\Config
2. Right-click the Machine.config file, and then click Edit.
3. Locate the following line:
   responseDeadlockInterval="00:03:00"
4. Change the time interval to the length of time that you want.
5. On the File menu, click Save.

Edit the Web.config File

For additional information about how to edit the Web.config file, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ASP.NET configuration information is stored in XML-based text files. The Machine.config configuration file contains settings that apply to the whole computer. This file is located in the following folder: Machine.config contains configuration settings for computer-wide assembly binding, built-in remoting channels, and ASP.NET. You can change the settings in the Machine.config file to modify the behavior of .NET programs on the computer.

The Web.config configuration files contain settings that are specific to an application. The settings in the Web.config file can override or modify the settings that are defined in parent folders, such as settings that are defined in the Machine.config file for the computer.

For more information about ASP.NET configuration files, visit the following Microsoft Web sites: For additional information about the Web.config configuration file, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: