topic Re: HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable in Report Server

HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 20:30:35 GMT

Hi,

I have Power BI Report Server (May 2019) installed on SQL Server 2016 Enterprise working perfectly.

But today I was upgrading to the September 2019 version, the installation completed normally, but when I opened the reports the following message was displayed in the browser:

HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

I checked everything:

- I checked logged in log files: C: \ Program Files \ Microsoft Power BI Report Server \ PBIRS \ LogFiles, but found no errors.

- I checked if service stopped.

- I uninstalled and installed, but the same error occurred.

But I was able to install Power BI Report Server (September 2019) on another server running SQL Server 2014.

Has anyone had this problem?
Is it a bug in this release, which does not let install in SQL Server 2016, only in SQL 2014?.

Thanks.
_Keny

Re: HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

d_gosbell — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 00:31:09 GMT

This issue has been reported before, but it only appears to be affecting a small amount of users and as of yet I don't think anyone has been able to isolate the root cause.

The existing thread is here https://community.powerbi.com/t5/Report-Server/Getting-503-error-child-process-RSPortal-died-Report-Server-Sept/m-p/809674#M11745 it's probably worth adding a comment to that thread as there is a PowerBI team member on that thread trying to capture more information about this issue.

Re: HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 11:28:36 GMT

The solution is to install the newest .Net Version on the machine (4.8 in my case). After that, the 503 error is gone. See other thread for details.

Re: HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 13:17:48 GMT

Hi,

I really appreciate your help.
Thanks.

Re: HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 12:35:52 GMT

Hi,

I installed the new release of this link below, but it didn't work.

Could you please put the link to download the release?

Thanks

_Keny

Re: HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

d_gosbell — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 22:42:15 GMT

Anonymous wrote:

I installed the new release of this link below, but it didn't work.

Have you tried manually installing a recent version of the .Net Framework as suggested earlier in this thread? This seems to be the fastest workaround for fixing this 503 error.

Re: HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Oct 2019 15:35:30 GMT

Hello,

I installed the .NET Framework 4.8 and it worked.

https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet-framework/net48

Thank you all.

_Keny

Re: HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

emere90 — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:01:41 GMT

Re: HTTP Error 503. The service is unavailable

emere90 — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 06:49:26 GMT

Hi Keny, the HTTP 503 error you are seeing after the September 2019 upgrade is a common issue and typically isn't a bug with SQL Server 2016 itself. The most frequent cause is that this specific release of Power BI Report Server requires .NET Framework 4.8 to function properly. Even if the installation finishes without errors, the service will fail to initialize the web portal if the correct .NET version is missing. I recommend manually installing .NET Framework 4.8 on your server and performing a reboot as this resolves the majority of these cases. If the issue persists after the update, you should open the Report Server Configuration Manager and re-apply your Service Account credentials and URL reservations to ensure all permissions and bindings are refreshed for the new version. Your SQL Server 2016 Enterprise environment is fully supported, so this is likely just a missing dependency or a configuration glitch during the upgrade process.