The way to avoid having to bounce the IIS service is to set your web site up to run in it's own memory space. This allows you to unload the individual site which will free up the dll. It also prevents a crash in your site crashing the IIS process. Very important if you have more than one site running! The steps for doing this are:

1. Launch the Internet Service Manager on the server.

2. Find the site in question, right click it, and select Properties.

3. On the Directory tab under Application Settings is a check box labeled "Run in separate memory space (isolated process)". Check that box and click OK.

Now your site will run in memory outside of the IIS process. When you need to overwrite your dll, go back to the property sheet and click the Unload button. You should then be able to overwrite your dll.

It should be pointed out that there is a performance hit for running a web site this way since there has to be interprocess communication between IIS and your site's process. I don't recommend doing this on a production machine if it can be avoided particularly if you expect heavy traffic (and you always should!). If you don't have a development server, then you can set your site up this way during development and once you're done go back to the property sheet, unload the app, and then uncheck the box.

HTH

>I found out that even if you do everything correctly, sometimes, IIS will simply not release your objects and it keeps a handle on your dlls.
>
>The only solution I found until now is to go to the Services applet and stop the IIS service. This is much faster than rebooting the computer, but it's still slow.
>
>If you find anything better, please let me know.
>
>Vlad