Website hosted in Plesk for Windows fails to load: The FastCGI process exceeded configured activity timeout

Symptoms

• A website is showing one of the following error messages in a web-browser:

  PLESK_INFO: HTTP Error 500.0 – Internal Server Error
  C:Program Files (x86)PleskAdditionalPleskPHP56php-cgi.exe – The FastCGI process exceeded configured request timeout

  ---

  PLESK_INFO: HTTP Error 500.0 – Internal Server Error
  C:Program Files (x86)ParallelsPleskAdditionalPleskPHP56php-cgi.exe – The FastCGI process exceeded configured activity timeout

• When installing a WordPress plugin via WordPress Admin Dashboard, the operation fails with:

  PLESK_INFO: Installation failed: 500 Internal Server Error [! – [if IE 6]] [! [Endif] -] Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator to get the error.

  and the following error message appears in IIS failed request tracing log, when enabled:

  The FastCGI process exceeded configured activity timeout.

Cause

Activity timeout or request timeout for FastCGI is insufficient.

Resolution

1. Log in to Plesk.

2. Go to Domains > example.com > PHP Settings.

3. Scroll down to “FastCGI settings” and switch on Enable FastCGI settings.

4. Increase the activityTimeout and requestTimeout values, for example, to 200.

   

5. Apply the changes.