As I wrote yesterday my MOSS site had this listed at Order 5 in things to do (and accessing it got a message that Central Administration was using an application pool that wasn't unique).

STOP: I'm now wondering (just that for the moment) what they mean here (in the subject line quote) by "account". So far I've been assuming that they meant simply that it was using the same application pool as something else.

Back to the planned text of this blog regardless.

Yesterday with more than a little help from a couple of fellow SharePoint MVPs I found out that you can't change an already assigned Application Pool within MOSS 2007. Instead you have to go to IIS and do it there. That too is the place you create a new Application Pool. Both things that weren't mentioned in the SharePoint Companion (but very possibly because they have nothing to do with SharePoint - I can just see that counter coming!)

When I went to IIS I discovered that I already *was* using a separate Application Pool for Central Administration - one too that I (?) had cleverly named Central Administration SharePoint v3. All the other web applications (Default; MYSites; Publishing) that I had created were all there too called ApplPool80, ApplPoolnnnn and ApplPoolmmmm respectively and each of these four pools only contained stuff that had some connection with only that one web application.

However it WAS giving me the above message, so I *in IIS* created a new Application Pool and then made sure that that Application Pool was now specified for Central Administration.

How ?  I wish I could remember. I know I was quite tired (and emotional?) by that time.

Anyway it was all irrelevant. That my Appl Pool now being used for Central Administration couldn't possibly be in use for anything else than Central Administration was certain, yet (you've guessed it) it was still claiming that my Central Administration application pool account should be unique.

By Design ?

Hardly seems likely.

Bug?

I'm a Microsoft MVP I don't think we are allowed to use that word

The Result of my trying wrongly to use the same application pool for Central Administration that Default was already using ?

Probably although it didn't let me do it. Seems to me that if that's the case it set something first ("he's going to use the same port as Default") and forgot to turn it off. If that's the case would *you* say that is "by design"?

P.S. The comment from "Gillian" was that it is indeed the *account* it is complaining about. You probably remember (as I do) when preparing your MOSS 2007 installation a Microsoft paper telling you that you ought to be using 6 (something like six) different accounts for different parts of the install. I thought they were mad (I don't think THAT is a banned word for MVPs!)and stuck with two only - one for the database system and one for installing MOSS 2007 and with that one having database creation and security admin rights for the database system. Well with this message Microsoft is telling me they didn't like me ignoring their advice (to have six accounts). As far as I can see nothing bad is going to happen to me if I ignore this Order 5 warning. So that (ignore it) is precisely what I am going to do when I get back to work on Monday! In the meantime I've learnt some useful stuff about Application Pools so none of the time spent looking at the (slightly!) wrong thing here has been wasted. [That's my story - and I'm sticking to it!)