I have been working at a client who is using Windows XP on their development boxes and came across this issue the other day when I tried to start IIS – Unexpected error 0x8ffe2740 occurred. I had a look in the System Event log and found an Error for the W3SVC service – The service could not bind instance 1. I like to have a quick look at http://www.eventid.net in these situations as the Event ID (115) will usually have an explanation for what caused the error along with some helpful responses from people who have had the same issue.

My first clue pointed me to this article about the problem which suggested that another service/application was already using port 80. Doing a bit more searching I came across another blog which provided me with a better solution… Skype was getting in the way! Since Skype will use port 80, if its free, it was stopping IIS from using the port. Fortunately this is an option in Skype you can turn off. Just deselect the check box (highlighted below) and then restart IIS.