Browsing to CFIDE/administrator/index.cfm locks up IIS & causes all .cfm pages fail?

jlig, there is no inherent reason that should happen. And there are so many questions to ask to possibly help you figure out the cause, and it could take many back and forths to get there.

Honestly, if you just want the problem solved, this is a situation where there seems no substitute for having someone do a screensharingn session where they "look over your shoulder" as you then remote in, and various diagnostics are assessed.

I keep a list of such consultants here, http://cf411.com/cftrouble, And I myself am one of those. I offer a satisfaction guarantee, so you won't pay for time you don't find valuable. And I think we could get to the bottom of this in less than an hour. If you're interested, reach out via the info offered on that page.

If you prefer to slog through things here, I have many questions:

- I assume this is new behavior. when did it change? And what had changed since it last worked? BTW, it may not be just about changes in the last day or two. It could be about a change that was made days or weeks ago, if it didn't take effect until a recent CF restart
- when you say you have to "restart the server", do you really mean the box or just CF? I can't fathom a problem caused by just visiting the CF Admin which would require a box restart? Maybe you mean you tried restarting the CF service and it didn't work. OK, what about just killing the CF process (not something to do normally, but better then rebooting the box).
- you say you are on 9. Is it Standard or Enterprise (that influences diagnostic tools you may have)
- have you looked at the CF logs? Not those in the CF logs folder, but those in the CF runtime logs? Any explanations there, especially before the server is restarted?

- you say the page pins and other users report failures. What mechanisms, if any, are you using to view things like how many requests are running (and queued), how much heap is in use (and allocated)?

- you don't say, but I assume you are getting to the Admin via a URL which runs through IIS (or you could be using CF's built-in web server). If IIS, which site is your request going through? And do you see if any other site has the CFIDE virtual directory defined? If so, what happens if you visit the Admin via that site?
- And have you tried using CF's built-in web server to get to the CF admin, rather than using IIS? (This is the new default behavior in CF2016, but it can be configured to work as well in any version of CF since 6.) I ask because it is possible that what's happening is not so much that CF is going down, but perhaps the IIS app pool instead.
- and to that point, have you tried just restarting IIS instead when this happens?
- are you watching the IIS "worker process" monitor, an option that can be enabled in IIS 7+ and would be in the features at the server level, if enabled.
- and though this may not matter, it may become useful to know: is the instance fully updated (what hotfix level are you on)? And you say you are on 9: is it 9.0? 9.01? or 9.0.2?
- And more important, were any updates to CF or the JVM applied recently? If so, which ones and when?.

So you see, when it comes to troubleshooting problems like this, there are SO many variables. And each question could lead to another. Now the truth is that if going through this with someone together on your server, the answers to one or more may either lead to the solution (before all were answered), or they may lead to other specific ones (without need of going through them all).

But if someone wants to do it solely online this way, there really is no choice but to consider all of them (and there are certainly some I have not listed, that may be brought up based on your answered to any).

Indeed, others may have still more questions or suggestions. We'll see.

Again, if you'd rather not wait for those, or type out answers to the above (and wait for a reply to that from me or others), I hope you can see why if time is of the essence, doing an online troubleshooting session together would be far more efficient.

Otherwise, hope the questions above may either help you find the answer, or motivate you to provide the answers so we can try to go from there.