WebDeploy Installation Failure – WMSvc failed to start

I tried to install WebDeploy 3,6 yesterday on one of our older web servers and mid way through the install an error was thrown:

Product: Microsoft Web Deploy 3.6 — Error 1920. Service ‘Web Management Service’ (WMSvc) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.

I tried starting the Web Management Service but got the following error in the Event Viewer:

The description for Event ID 1007 from source Microsoft-Windows-IIS-IISManager cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

If the event originated on another computer, the display information had to be saved with the event.

The following information was included with the event:

IISWMSVC_STARTUP_UNABLE_TO_READ_CERTIFICATE

Unable to read the certificate with thumbprint ‘2f91e34643e2de76e734834943fe12354cc4e5’.  Please make sure the SSL certificate exists and that is correctly configured in the Management Service page.

Process:WMSvc
User=NT AUTHORITY\LOCAL SERVICE

the message resource is present but the message is not found in the string/message table

I found the SSL certificate field in the Management Services section of the IIS management console was empty.  When I tried to set it using one our installed certificates it complained on save:

Could not update the service settings. A specified logon session does not exist. It may already have been terminated

Based on other web searches this appears to be because my existing certificates don’t allow exporting which is a good security measure for SSL certificates used for SSL on public sites.

The Fix

So I went to the Server Certificates section and created a new self-signed certificate named “RemoteManagement”:

image

I was able to select, save and then start the Web Management Service after this. 

image

This allowed my WebDeploy installation to complete and I was able to successfully deploy my site via MSDeploy.

If this blog post was helpful or you have further questions please leave a comment below.

Happy Deploying!

4 thoughts on “WebDeploy Installation Failure – WMSvc failed to start”

  1. Your post helped me a lot. Thank you. My problem was that I accidently deleted SSL certificate few days earlier and never knew about the link between that certificate and the Management Service.
    I was getting the error exactly the same and your fix did the cure.

    One thing I did notice before I deleted original SSL certificate was that it’s expire date was far longer than 1 year. (10? 20? maybe) But after creating new self signed certificate this way Windows only created cert expiring eaxtly 1 year from now. Sure I can create new cert when it expire but it would be come handy to know how to create self signed certificate expiring much longer than 1 year.

    Lastly, name doesn’t have to be RemoteManagement does it? I followed your foot step but just wondering…

    Anyway, Thank you heaps ^^
    Have a nice day.

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