What is w3wp.exe? - wcf

Question

I have a WCF service running under a service user on my local system. Every time I try to debug it is giving me a message Attach Security warning.
In Visual Studio, by default (even without attaching), I get this error:
Attaching to this process can potentially harm your computer. If the
information below looks suspicious or you are unsure, do not attach to
this process
Name: C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\w3wp.exe
What is w3wp.exe? According to a Google search, I think it is related to IIS. But what does it do? What setting should be changed so that this won't give this message everytime I try to debug on my local system?

Answer 1

An Internet Information Services (IIS) worker process is a windows
process (w3wp.exe) which runs Web applications, and is responsible for
handling requests sent to a Web Server for a specific application
pool.
It is the worker process for IIS. Each application pool creates at least one instance of w3wp.exe and that is what actually processes requests in your application. It is not dangerous to attach to this, that is just a standard windows message.

Answer 2

Chris pretty much sums up what w3wp is. In order to disable the warning, go to this registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\10.0\Debugger
And set the value DisableAttachSecurityWarning to 1.

Answer 3

A worker process runs as an executables file named W3wp.exe
A Worker Process is user mode code whose role is to process requests,
such as processing requests to return a static page.
The worker process is controlled by the www service.
worker processes also run application code, Such as ASP .NET
applications and XML web Services.
When Application pool receive the request, it simply pass the request
to worker process (w3wp.exe) . The worker process“w3wp.exe” looks up
the URL of the request in order to load the correct ISAPI extension.
ISAPI extensions are the IIS way to handle requests for different
resources. Once ASP.NET is installed, it installs its own ISAPI
extension (aspnet_isapi.dll)and adds the mapping into IIS.
When Worker process loads the aspnet_isapi.dll, it start an
HTTPRuntime, which is the entry point of an application. HTTPRuntime
is a class which calls the ProcessRequest method to start Processing.
For more detail refer URL
http://aspnetnova.blogspot.in/2011/12/how-iis-process-for-aspnet-requests.html

Answer 4

w3wp.exe is a process associated with the application pool in IIS. If you have more than one application pool, you will have more than one instance of w3wp.exe running. This process usually allocates large amounts of resources. It is important for the stable and secure running of your computer and should not be terminated.
You can get more information on w3wp.exe here
http://www.processlibrary.com/en/directory/files/w3wp/25761/