Cannot Start Process in VM Role

Question

I have an application that runs in the VM Role.  The application, which is run as an Administrator calls Process.Start and gets an exception every time.  The exception is 

Unknown error (0xfffffffe)

This works completely fine when the VM is hosted on my local machine.  I can also RDP into the machine and start processes manually or in a command prompt with no problem.

Answer 1

Hello,

I suggest you provide stack or exception message about that Unknow error.

Check this link for more details about your problem:

http://sajojacob.com/blog/tag/vm-role/

Hope this helps.

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Answer 2

Here is the stack trace:
4/23/2012 10:17:00 AM [ProcessActivator] []: System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception (0x80004005): Unknown error (0xfffffffe)
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.StartWithShellExecuteEx(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(ProcessStartInfo startInfo)
   at System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(String fileName)
   at OLII.Apps.Services.ProcessesActivation.ProcessActivationService.StartProcess(String processName)

The process that is trying to start another process is started via a batch file which is ran in the Task Scheduler as an Administrator.  When I start the process that is trying to start the other process manually, it works without error.  

Answer 3

Hi,

You mentioned that this task works fine on cloud (via RDP) and local manually, and has Administrator permission, i think this problem should be Task Scheduler issue, does your task scheduler "run with highest privileges" property is checked? Or you can find more exception about this error in Windows Event logs in VM via RDP.

The error code 0x80004005, i find most similar error occured by "Can not find the file or assembly", could you make sure that your files or assemblies path is correct in VM?

Another workaround for this issue is that try to use other ways to start your process to see if has the same exception, for example, use Windows Service or background thread to start the process every 5 mins.

Hope this helps.

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