Unable to Start Server

Whinis

I have managed to start the PhotonControl tray application and it can take several minutes to load. Whenever I try and start the Photon server as an application I wait 5-10 minutes before getting the error

Photon.System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: Access Denied
System.Diagnostics.Process.StartWithShellExecuteEx(ProcessStartInfo startInfo) 
at PhotonControl.ControlForm.StartPhotonApplication()

I have not been able to start the server in any way, attempting to start PhotonSocketServer.exe from CMD just outputs access denied after 5-10 minutes.

Tobias

Which system (OS, 32 or 64bit) and Photon SDK version?
You need DotNet 3.5 (runtime) and admin rights.

Access Denied sounds like an issue with the rights. Try to unzip the SDK with WinRar or 7Zip into a new folder/location.
Usually it should work and start within much less time.

Whinis

Tried running PhotonControl both with and without admin rights.
Have tried running from Rar,Drive E,D,and C with C being an ssd.
When run from SSD no noticeable speed increase in startup which is fairly odd in itself.
Tried removing previous unpack and getting a new version from download without any success
Ran Procmon to try and find a possible explanation and the thread appears to get stuck several times as well as not allowed to create a CLSID registry key. It also gets several FAST IO DISALLOWED messages.

.net 2
.net3
.net3.5
.net 4
Windows 7 64 bit

== Core ==
PhotonSocketServer.2010
x64 Unicode Release
BuildDate: 2012-04-27 17:59:35
Version: 3.0.15.1343
SVN repository: photon-socketserver
SVN revisions of...
... this project: 1343
... bin-tools: 85
== SDK ==
BuildDate: 2012-04-27 18:29:38
Version: 3.0.24.3243
SVN repository: photon-socketserver-sdk
SVN revisions of...
... this project: 3243
... bin-tools: 3243

Tobias

The start time is not really a load time but caused by loading and decrypting the license. This process takes its time in 64bit, which is annoying (us too). As we use a third party product for this, we can't really change it. We filed a bug report a while ago.

We will release Photon 3 (final) soon and it loads much faster with a few tricks. I hope this helps you too.

Thanks for the details!
I will point my colleagues to your reported procmon observations. Could be a lead.

Tobias

If you can copy+paste the info from procmon here, this might help a bit more. The fast IO part is probably not a problem bur the CLSID might be interesting.
By the way: You can skip Photon Control and use the provided .cmd files (Photon does not run without proper command line parameters).

Whinis

Some of the things that look important

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727\CONFIG\security.config.cch.new  ACCESS DENIED

RegCreateKey HKCU\Software\CLASSES\CLSID\{2F004D00-5700-4200-4D00-680043002B00}    ACCESS DENIED

RegCreateKey  HKCU\Software\Classes\CLSID    ACCESS DENIED

I could also send the entire result somewhere as its a rather long file

Tobias

I think this is new to us.
Please zip that file AND the server's logs. Whatever is in the /bin_*/log folder you use. Send it to: developer@exitgames.com
Thank you.

Whinis

Procmon Log as XML and server logs sent to email as requested

Tobias

So far, it didn't show up in the tickets.
If it came back, maybe the size was too big?!

We will likely take a look on Monday (getting kind of late for a Friday).
Thanks!

Whinis

On a hunch I looked at the rar files and the files on the 3 folders I had and noticed that task.txt was in them but not in the rar. After also messing with the batch command I was able to get the server started by removing the lines about task.txt. For whatever reason it was creating task.txt but didn't have permission to read it, after deleting it the server works fine again. I didn't see it reflected in the procmon list anywhere but seemed to have been the problem. Even my boot times for the control and server are many times faster.

Tobias

Wow. Great you found that! That's a new one.
The tasks.txt is just a "running applications list", used to avoid another double starting Photon when using the batch commands.
Did this affect the start through Photon Control too??

Whinis

Unless there was some other underlying problem that also fixed it when I deleted the file it appeared so. To eliminate all problems I had also restarted my computer, I am normally a linux person so windows quirks sometime elude me however deleting and file and a restart appeared to get everyone working again including photon control.