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We've installed Oracle Express on a Windows 2003 Server and in the process it updated the PATH. We're trying to get IIS to see this change in the PATH but we can't figure it out. We've recycled the app pool and the IIS site with no success. Is there any way to get it to recognize without restarting IIS itself? It's a prod server so we don't want to reset IIS.

Mark
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You'll have to restart the IIS service process to get it to update, I'm afraid. Global environment is inherited when the process starts and for most apps the only way to get it to update is to restart the process. It's a pain, but at least it is something you can plan for.

qbik
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sysadmin1138
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    Just as an addendum to this for anyone like me who find this (very useful) answer, in IIS7 I've found that simply using the GUI to stop and start IIS doesn't work - but the command line `iisreset` does. May well be the same in earlier versions but I've not tested it. – Steve Pettifer Sep 01 '14 at 15:33
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    For me, neither stopping and starting IIS in the MMC snap-in, nor running `iisreset` was sufficient. I had to restart the entire server (VM). – Kenny Evitt Jan 12 '16 at 14:32
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    For IIS 10 (Win2016), restarting _only_ the "World Wide Web Publishing Service" Windows service is sufficient to reload the environment variables. Yes, executing `iisreset /restart` from an elevated command prompt does it too, and is less to type than `net stop w3svc && net start w3svc` ) – Granger May 17 '18 at 05:23
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    I removed some machine environment variables. Only server restart helped to forget them (IIS 7.5). – Der_Meister Jun 06 '18 at 12:09
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    This after two days of trying everything and restarting only using the GUI! iisreset did the trick!! Thank you so much! – MISJHA Nov 13 '18 at 15:02