The Problem

How do you find the ApplicationPoolIdentity Account?

Under IIS 7 you have the ability to set the user account that the Application Pool will run under. By Default this appears to be a setting called “ApplicationPoolIdentity”.

So if you need to provide access for this user to a local system resource how do you find the user account when you are searching in the security tab?

The Answer

When the application pool is created a new user account is created with the name of the Application Pool.
This account is created on the local machine in the format of:
IIS AppPool\AppPoolName – where AppPoolName is the name of your application pool

So for example the DefaultAppPool user can be found by searching for:
IIS AppPool\DefaultAppPool

When Resolved