Difference between IISRESET and IIS Stop-Start command
Take IISReset as a suite of commands that helps you manage IIS start / stop etc.
Which means you need to specify option (/switch) what you want to do to carry any operation.
Default behavior OR default switch is /restart with iisreset so you do not need to run command twice with /start and /stop.
Hope this clarifies your question. For reference the output of iisreset /? is:
IISRESET.EXE (c) Microsoft Corp. 1998-2005Usage:iisreset [computername] /RESTART Stop and then restart all Internet services. /START Start all Internet services. /STOP Stop all Internet services. /REBOOT Reboot the computer. /REBOOTONERROR Reboot the computer if an error occurs when starting, stopping, or restarting Internet services. /NOFORCE Do not forcefully terminate Internet services if attempting to stop them gracefully fails. /TIMEOUT:val Specify the timeout value ( in seconds ) to wait for a successful stop of Internet services. On expiration of this timeout the computer can be rebooted if the /REBOOTONERROR parameter is specified. The default value is 20s for restart, 60s for stop, and 0s for reboot. /STATUS Display the status of all Internet services. /ENABLE Enable restarting of Internet Services on the local system. /DISABLE Disable restarting of Internet Services on the local system.
The following was tested for IIS 8.5 and Windows 8.1.
As of IIS 7, Windows recommends restarting IIS via net stop/start. Via the command prompt (as Administrator):
> net stop WAS> net start W3SVCnet stop WAS will stop W3SVC as well. Then when starting, net start W3SVC will start WAS as a dependency.
I know this is quite an old post, but I would like to point out the following for people who will read it in the future:As per MS:
Do not use the IISReset.exe tool to restart the IIS services. Instead,use the NET STOP and NET START commands. For example, to stop andstart the World Wide Web Publishing Service, run the followingcommands:
- NET STOP iisadmin /y
- NET START w3svc
There are two benefits to using the NET STOP/NET START commands torestart the IIS Services as opposed to using the IISReset.exe tool.First, it is possible for IIS configuration changes that are in theprocess of being saved when the IISReset.exe command is run to belost. Second, using IISReset.exe can make it difficult to identifywhich dependent service or services failed to stop when this problemoccurs. Using the NET STOP commands to stop each individual dependentservice will allow you to identify which service fails to stop, so youcan then troubleshoot its failure accordingly.