I'm getting a failure while installing VisualCron 6.2.2 on a Windows Server 2003 32bit system. I've tried both the exe and the .zip/msi installations and get the same error both times:

Error 1001. The installation failed, and the rollback has been performed. --> An exception occurred in the OnBeforeInstall event handler of System.ServiceProcess.ServiceProcessInstaller. --> Common Language Runtime detected an invalid program.

Please try this:

http://neteject.com/down...ron6.2.2-nouninstall.exe 

This is 6.2.2. without the special functionality for removing existing service (in case of repair). That might cause the issue.

---

Downloaded the different install and am getting the same error as before.

Can you make sure that you have the latest update of .NET 4.0 install. I would recommend that you perform all Windows 2003 updates that are available as well before installing.

---

System is up-to-date on 2003 patches. Currently sporting version 4.0.30319 of .NET.

Have you tried to right click and Run-as Administrator?

---

Just tried the right-click to run as admin and still getting the same error.

Please re-download and re-install this:

http://neteject.com/down...ron6.2.2-nouninstall.exe 

---

Installation worked with that exe, with one caveat - it failed while installing the Tray client.

I'm also having trouble starting the VisualCron service. It stays in a "Starting" state. Does this need to be reported as a separate issue or do I need to have the server rebooted?

There are clearly some permission problems on this machine. What we did remove, which made it working for you were some logging to the event viewer.

I am not sure it is worth troubleshooting both the tray client and server. There must be something specific with this machine that is locked down. Please try install on other machine.

Did you have VisualCron installed on this machine before?

---

This is the first time trying to install to this specific system. We've installed on other systems before without any issues.

I'm going to contact our vendor to see if there is some sort of rights issue. The user I'm utilizing is an Administrator on the box, but I agree that it looks like a deeper issue at this point.

We were able to do an installation of 6.2.2 on another system in the same environment, but it was running Windows Server 2008 64-bit. It initially failed during installation with the same errors we had received before, but after our infrastructure team lead traced the processes with Sysinternals, the install worked and we were able to start the service.

However, we tried to watch the process on the original 2003 32-bit box. Below is the email from our lead:

The trace of the service showed that for big part of the startup it tried to read the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NLS\CustomLocale, many-many times, and all these times with error NAME NOT FOUND (was it reading some data from that key?). Then it shuffled with some .NET and MFC and VC80 dlls, and then just abruptly stopped and doing just nothing. Not a thing.

I am afraid there is a dead-race condition in the code, which just dead-locks it. Can't figure the reason, nothing obvious in the process trace.

I'm not sure if this is enough to go off of, but we're at a stand still. We compared permissions between this server and the 2008 successful installation, and they are identical - so we don't believe it to be permissions related.

Additionally, we've applied all available patches and did a full reinstall of .NET 4 without any luck.

Could you send us server_startup.txt and log_serverDATE.txt after trying to start the service. Maybe we can find something there. Please send it to support@visualcron.com

We were able to do an installation of 6.2.2 on another system in the same environment, but it was running Windows Server 2008 64-bit. It initially failed during installation with the same errors we had received before, but after our infrastructure team lead traced the processes with Sysinternals, the install worked and we were able to start the service.

However, we tried to watch the process on the original 2003 32-bit box. Below is the email from our lead:

The trace of the service showed that for big part of the startup it tried to read the HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\NLS\CustomLocale, many-many times, and all these times with error NAME NOT FOUND (was it reading some data from that key?). Then it shuffled with some .NET and MFC and VC80 dlls, and then just abruptly stopped and doing just nothing. Not a thing.

I am afraid there is a dead-race condition in the code, which just dead-locks it. Can't figure the reason, nothing obvious in the process trace.

I'm not sure if this is enough to go off of, but we're at a stand still. We compared permissions between this server and the 2008 successful installation, and they are identical - so we don't believe it to be permissions related.

Additionally, we've applied all available patches and did a full reinstall of .NET 4 without any luck.

---

I will gladly send those files if you can tell me where to find them.

They are located in the "log" folder of the installation folder.

---

OK. I thought it would be there, but when I look under "C:\Program Files\VisualCron\log", the only file I see is VisualCron.sdf. No other files in that directory at all.

It could be a permission problem to the whole installation folder - if VisualCron cannot even write log files. We try to log to the event viewer as well but maybe permissions stop that as well.

---

Per our admin:

OK, it still is not good.

No *new* log files in that folder, even with explicit Write permission for that account.

Would their app be a bit more talkative, it’d report one way or another about what’s going on. Some sort of debug run, when app logs every step it takes – that at least would help narrow down to the section in a code which freezes.

Without that we could rely only on the Process Trace. I captured it with Sysinternal’s Process Monitor. They could open the trace in the same program and analyze it.

They would see that for 2 minutes after the first “Thread Exit” near the bottom of the trace, the process did not interact with the OS in no any way. After 2 minutes, once I got an error back from Services.MSC that the service could not be started, or that it does not respond to OS, I killed the process via Task Manager, and that’s how very last commands (including more “Thread Exit”) got logged.

They should be able to use that trace file to analyze and match against the code and figure out, what went wrong with our case. Unless they have a way to enable extensive logging by application itself.

I will mail the file he referenced to the support email noted above.

Thanks.

I recommend that you test VisualCron on a fresh machine with nothing else installed. Maybe you can compare in some way the two systems.

Without the logging, which is just basic logging to file it is very hard to know.

You could send us server_settings.xml so we can see if there is any strange entries in the server settings.

---