I have a web application (IIS 6.0) which is running on Windows 2003 Web  
  
Edition (SP1). It is the only application without any virtual  
  
directories, running in process isolation mode. There is only one app  
  
pool and it is NOT configured as a web garden (max. worker processes =  
  
1). So why would there be as many as 8 instances of w3wp.exe listed in  
  
the task manager?  
  
I am investigating some availability and performance issues and am  
  
worried about memory usage and so seeing 8 instances bothers me since  
  
half of them are using over 100 MB a piece. Could someone please shed  
  
some light on this issue for me please?  
  
Thanks in advance,  
  
Mark Miller

I found that the server had be configured improperly for crash  
  
debugging and the app pools were not being released. Once this was  
  
corrected the app pools were shut down and closed as expected.