Although Windows Server 2003 has been with us a while I can across this issue recently. This only because most of the 2003 domain controller installations I had seen were 32bit. But recently I found a domain that had a mixture of 32bit and 64bit domain controllers.

You run netdiag on your Windows 2003 64bit domain controller and get many failures like the ones bellow:

DNS test . . . . . . . . . . . . . : Failed
[FATAL] Could not open file C:WINDOWSsystem32confignetlogon.dns for reading.
[FATAL] No DNS servers have the DNS records for this DC registered.

Redir and Browser test . . . . . . : Failed
List of NetBt transports currently bound to the Redir
Continue reading Netdiag Failed (DNS test, Redir and Browser test, DC list test, Kerberos test) →

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In the event viewer you should see error with Event ID 7024.
The IIS Admin Service service terminated with service-specific error %%-2146893809.

Here is a possible fix. For the service to start it needs RSA MachineKey and access to it. The Key is stored in C:UsersAll UsersApplication DataMicrosoftCryptoRSAMachineKeys(for Server 2008)  you should see some files in that location with the size of 2 or 3 Kbytes. Look for the file name that starts with ‘C23’. This is the key that is used by Microsoft Internet Information Server. Check the permissions on that key and make sure that ‘System’ and ‘Administrators’ have full control on this key. Once the permissions are set try starting IIS Admin service.