Broken Service Dependency on Windows 2003

This is a bug.

On Windows 2003, World Wide Web Publishing Service depends on HTTP SSL and IIS Admin Service, which is to say, if HTTP SSL is stopped, World Wide Web Publishing Service cannot be running. However, recently, for multiple times, on my test machine, after running "iisreset", I see that World Wide Web Publishing Service is "Started" while HTTP SSL is "Stopped".

The event log tells us the answer:

From 12:58:19AM ("The HTTP SSL service was successfully sent a stop control") to 12:58:21AM ("The HTTP SSL service entered the stopped state"), the status of HTTP SSL service is "Stopping". Windows was kind of cheated. Windows thought that it's Ok to start FTP and WWW services as long as HTTP SSL is not "Stopped". The code might be like this:

    if ( none of the depended service is "Stopped")
        start the service;
    else
        raise error;

The code should have been like this:

    if ( every depended service is "Started")
        start the service;
    else
        raise error;

This issue could be repro-ed on busy machines: do iisreset frequently and at meanwhile high volumn HTTP/S requests keep coming. I heard that this issue was found way back to 2004 or earlier. Until it's fixed someday, the workaround is to force start HTTP SSL service after every iisreset.