Windows Service Hangs in "Starting" status after using InstallService.batch

[BrettB]

I was out of town when sub first did the release with the installservice.bat to create the Windows service, so didn't try it right away. Yesterday, I upgraded to the latest 20191005 version, and tried to use the installservice.bat. It seemed to create the service OK, but when it tried to start it, I got the error

Code:

The NextPVR Service service is starting........
The NextPVR Service service could not be started.

The service did not report an error.

I did not find any entries in the Windows logs. And no NRecord.log got created. When I manually killed the process for the "starting" service, I could manually run the NextPVRserver.exe like I've been doing all along just fine.

Today, I shut down the server, removed the service which had been created, installed the 20191006 version, and again ran the installservice.bat (in an Administrator command prompt window). I got the same results. The service gets created, but apparently "hangs" during startup. I'm not sure what else to do to try troubleshooting this.

[sub]

We got BrettB going. I'm not really sure what we did, but it started running. We effectively manually ran NextPVRServer.exe, then restarted the service and it ran correctly.

[BrettB]

We got BrettB going. I'm not really sure what we did, but it started running. We effectively manually ran NextPVRServer.exe, then restarted the service and it ran correctly.

FYI - the key program that you had to run manually first was NextPVRService.exe not NextPVRServer.exe.

When I stopped the service, did the normal unzip to get this latest test version, and then tried to start the service again, it did the same hanging thing.

So this time, I opened a Non-Administrator command window. Went to C:\Program Files\NPVR5\ folder and tried to manually do "NextPVRService.exe RUN". This time, I got a Windows security pop-up asking me to approve running the unknown program. I tried to capture a copy of the message because it did include an signature ID or something for the image, but the capture didn't work. Anyway, as soon as I approved it, the manual run continued and started the server. I was then able to immediately shutdown the manual run and start the service without problem. Kind of a pain if we have to do that every time that we get a new version, but at least the service part seems to be working.

FYI I'm not running any 3rd party anti-virus--just the built-in Windows 10 Defender/Firewall/etc.

[mvallevand]

This is typical behavior when downloading exe files from the internet through a browser.

Martin

[BrettB]

This is typical behavior when downloading exe files from the internet through a browser.

In this case, it was a .zip file downloaded and then extracted, but basically the same thing. The difference from when sub did it the first time is that it was running in a command window started with Administrator privileges, and in that case, we never got a prompt. It just "magically" started working.

At any rate, it's probably going to be a confusing/support thing for end-users right now.

[mvallevand]

The easy solution is not to use the browser (since it is all command line anyway). Win10 has curl built in so using

curl -k https://nextpvr.com/beta/windows/NPVR.zip -o NPVR.zip

would solve browser security issues.

Martin

[VCR58]

I was out of town when sub first did the release with the installservice.bat to create the Windows service, so didn't try it right away. Yesterday, I upgraded to the latest 20191005 version, and tried to use the installservice.bat. It seemed to create the service OK, but when it tried to start it, I got the error

Code:

The NextPVR Service service is starting........
The NextPVR Service service could not be started.

The service did not report an error.

I got the same error message when running installservice.bat.
What worked for me is to run from a command prompt

sc.exe delete "NextPVR Service"

The I restarted the PC and ran installservice.bat then it started. 

So, I guess you may need to stop the old service, then uninstall it before upgrading to new software and installing the new service.

[mvallevand]

For any upgrade you will need stop the service to update open files. However you should not need to run installservice.bat again, just restart the service.

Martin

[VCR58]

For any upgrade you will need stop the service to update open files.  However you should not need to run installservice.bat again, just restart the service.

Martin

I'll have to remember that next time. 

Running  installservice.bat is what caused my problem since it tried to install a service that already exists.

[VCR58]

I tried v5 it on a different PC and nothing I tried was getting the service working. I fussed with it for an hour and magically it started working. What a royal pain   The last version that had a service wasn't a problem.