Solving SharePoint Server 2010 - 503. The service is unavailable, After installation

Installed: SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Enterprise Beta (x64) On: Windows Server 2008 Standard (x64) on 64 bit hardware

Attempts to access the Central Administration console led to IIS returning 503. The service is unavailable

And this error was found in the Application log

The Module DLL ‘C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\isapi\owssvr.dll‘ could not be loaded due to a configuration problem. The current configuration only supports loading images built for a x86 processor architecture.

After much ado, the solution turned out to be:

1) Ensure that the enable32BitAppOnWin64 seeting for the "SharePoint Central Administration" app pool is set to False, and the same for the "SharePoint Web Services Root" app pool

2) Edit applicationHost.config:

Change:

  <globalModules>
 ...
 ...
 <add name="SharePoint14Module" image="C:\Program Files\Common
 Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server
 Extensions\14\isapi\owssvr.dll"
 preCondition="appPoolName=SharePoint
 Central Administration v4" />
 </globalModules>

To:

    <add name="SharePoint14Module" image="C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft
 Shared\Web Server Extensions\14\isapi\owssvr.dll" preCondition=
"appPoolName=SharePoint Central Administration v4,bitness64" />

I hope this helps somebody :-)

bitness64 being the magic word here