WMI/PowerShell Bug: why is CreateSite creating *two* sites all of the sudden?

Question

I have a simple PowerShell script that uses WMI to create a web site on a Vista box. Yes, I know PowerShell has an IIS provider for working with IIS 7, but this script must also support IIS 6.0, so that rules that out.

Anyway, the script was working just fine, but all of the sudden (and I mean that literally, I made zero code changes to the script) it started creating a second, broken site for every call to the CreateNewSite method. Below is the script. Anyone have any ideas?

$path = "C:\My Path\WebSite"
$site = "TestSite"
$hostHeader = "demo.blah.com"

$service = Get-WmiObject -namespace "root\MicrosoftIISv2" -class "IIsWebService"

$bindingClass = [wmiclass]'root\MicrosoftIISv2:ServerBinding'
$bindings = $bindingClass.CreateInstance()
$bindings.IP = ""
$bindings.Port = "80"
$bindings.Hostname = $hostHeader

$result = $service.CreateNewSite($site, $bindings, $path)

The above script was just creating a site named 'TestSite', but now it's also creating a site called 'SITE_1786339847' (the number changes, but it's always similar to that). I have stepped through the script executing one line at a time, and neither site is created until the CreateNewSite method is invoked. Is WMI just buggy?

Answer 1

Whoops, answered my own question. I checked the raw IIS 7.0 configuration file and found an orphaned virtual directory that was associated to a site with the ID 1786339847. When I removed that virtual directory from the configuration file, the script started working correctly again.

In case anyone runs into something similar, grab the site ID for the bad site from IIS Manager before deleting it, then open up C:\Windows\system32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config. Scan the file for that ID and look for any orphaned references to it. Be sure you have a backup first.

Answer 2

Wow this is funny. I just read this message about an hour and ago and thought that was strange. I had never seen that happen and then guess what? It happened to me too. The good news is I didn't have to beat my head against the wall all day trying to figure out what was going on.

Rhonda