We Keep Coding

MK_E_UNAVAILABLE in Marshal.GetActiveObject("Word.Application")

0x800401E3 (MK_E_UNAVAILABLE) error occurs in my case when UAC (User Account Control) isn't set to the un-restrictive "Never Notify Me".
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application wd =
(Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application)
System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetActiveObject("Word.Application");
The error is thrown when the code is run after publishing and installing the project. While debugging in the editor instead, everything is fine.
Is this due to security settings or credentials ? How to write such code correctly pls ?
Win Word is open and a document is open too, of course, and this code has always worked fine with UAC set to "Never Notify Me".

Running word as a service is nasty business see for instance here . I went through quite a few problems making it work. The way I made it work was to run it in separate process which launches it only once. The main program communicates with the process by sending commands as strings to stdin of the process and waiting for response on the stdout. If the response does not come in time allotted the process is killed and restarted

Cannot stop the service using ServiceController in .NET 3.5

I'm working in .NET 3.5 and I have the problem with stopping some service using ServiceController. I searched whole internet and I found no solution to my problem ;)
Here's how I do that:
using (ServiceController service = new ServiceController("Service"))
{
try
{
TimeSpan timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(timeoutSeconds);
service.Stop();
service.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped, timeout);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
Console.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
}
}
I'm waiting until my service stops. Then I want to replace it's libraries (update it). And the exception is thrown:
UnauthorizedAccessException
Exception Details: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access to the path 'blablabla' is denied.
I'm sure that I have access to this path, because I run my application as an Administrator.
What is interesting when this piece of code executes, this Service disappear from the List of current services (in Task Manager). So it actually stops it, but some thread has to still use it, so I can not move any Service's files. Even when I try to move files by myself (I go to the Service directory and try to move its files using mouse) I can not do it. But when I stop the Service manually (Task Manager and 'End Task') I can do whatever I want with its files. So what's the difference between stopping it from C# code (using ServiceController) and stopping it using Task Manager?
I don't know if it's important but I run this application (and this Service) on Windows Server 2008 in Virtual Box. (I needed to run it on some other machine then my computer).
Any ideas how can I solve this problem? ;)
Thanks for any help.
Best wishes,
Pete.

Ok, I solved my problem.
First I used an Administrator Command-Prompt Command of Net Stop to stop the Service and it worked, but I started to wonder why. The answer is it took a lot of time!
ServiceController actually stopped it, but some processes was still using it.
service.WaitForStatus(ServiceControllerStatus.Stopped, timeout);
Also workerd fine, because it imidaitely changed the status of the service (it's just one change in Windows Services list), but closing politely all threads using certain Service takes some time :)
So all You need to do is just wait, and then check again if it's still running. If it is, then kill it with Process class.

My C# application is returning 0xE0434352 to Windows Task Scheduler but it is not crashing

I have written a few C# apps that I have running via windows task scheduler. They are running successfully (as I can see from the log files that they are writing ) but windows task scheduler shows them returning a last run result of 0xE0434352. Is there something I need to do in my C# application so that it returns a success code to the windows task scheduler?

Another option is to simply use the Application log accessible via the Windows Event Viewer. The .Net error will be recorded to the Application log.
You can see these events here:
Event Viewer (Local) > Windows Logs > Application

When setup a job in new windows you have two fields "program/script" and "Start in(Optional)". Put program name in first and program location in second.
If you will not do that and your program start not in directory with exe, it will not find files that are located in it.

Hans Passant was correct, I added a handler for AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException as described here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.appdomain.unhandledexception(v=vs.71).aspx I was able to find the exception that was occurring and corrected it.

I was referencing a mapped drive and I found that the mapped drives are not always available to the user account that is running the scheduled task so I used \\IPADDRESS instead of MAPDRIVELETTER: and I am up and running.

In case it helps others, I got this error when the service the task was running at didn't have write permission to the executable location. It was attempting to write a log file there.

I had this issue and it was due to the .Net framework version. I had upgraded the build to framework 4.0 but this seemed to affect some comms dlls the application was using. I rolled back to framework 3.5 and it worked fine.

I got the same error but I have fixed it by changing the file reading path from "ConfigFile.xml" to AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory.ToString() + "ConfigFile.xml"
In my case, this error due to file path error because task manager starts program from "System32" as initial path but the folder we thought.

I was getting the same message message within dotNet Core 2.2 using MVC 5, however nothing was being logged to the Windows Event Viewer.
I found that I had changed the Project sdk from Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Web to Microsoft.NET.Sdk.Razor (seen within the projects.csproj file). I changed this back and it worked fine :)

In my case it was because I had message boxes. Once I commented that code out, it started working. I remembered that could be a problem when I looked at the event log as suggested in this thread. Thank you everyone!

I encountered this problem when working with COM objects. Under certain circumstances (my fault), I destroyed an external .EXE process, in a parallel thread, a variable tried to access the com interface app.method and a COM-level crash occurred. Task Scheduler noticed this and shut down the app. But if you run the app in the console and don't handle the exception, the app will continue to work ...
Please note that if you use unmanaged code or external objects (AD, Socket, COM ...), you need to monitor them!

Also message box in PowerShell. I converted PowerShell script to exe. When running as admin it's worked but in task schedule I received this error also.
There was an line in PowerShell script with write-output. After commented this line and compile new exe Task Schedule was completed successfully.

It is permission issue in my case the task scheduler has a user which doesn't have permission on the server in which the database is present.

Why does my c# Windows service stop running without any messages being written to the application event log?

I am fairly new to Windows services. I created an installer for my c# Windows service and the installation on the server (Windows Server 2003) appears to have worked. When it's started, it writes Service started successfully to the log. When it's stopped, it writes Service stopped successfully. However, sometimes the service stops running without writing anything to the log, so I start it back up manually. When I look at the log afterward, it says Service started successfully as expected. It's weird seeing that in the log twice in a row being that it's obviously missing an entry where the service had somehow stopped running.
What could be the potential causes for this? I have the service set up as automatic and installed it to run for all users. I was under the impression that this means the service starts automatically whenever the machine boots up. How can I find out why it stopped? Do services that crash automatically write to the event log or do I have to handle exceptions in such a way that they log their own reason for the crash?
Edit: Some additional info:
I have it set up to log on as Local System Account
Under Recovery options, I have it set up to restart on first failure. I don't have anything for second or subsequent failures.
Update: An answerer recommended a global exception handler. While I won't implement this as a permanent fix, it will at least help me figure out where the problem is occurring. I actually tested this with my installed service and it works. I found out that unhandled exceptions actually do crash the service without writing anything to the log at all. I thought it'd at least report some application error, but it doesn't.
static void Main()
{
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException += new UnhandledExceptionEventHandler(CurrentDomain_UnhandledException);
//other code here
}
static void CurrentDomain_UnhandledException(object sender, UnhandledExceptionEventArgs e)
{
Utilities.WriteIt(e.ExceptionObject as Exception);
}

It's always best to handle the exceptions. At least use a global exception handler and write it to a logfile

It sounds like your service is failing unexpectedly without doing any form of exception-handling and/or logging. Windows services do not automatically write exceptions to the Event Log - it's up to you to handle exceptions and (if they're fatal) write them out somewhere so that you can diagnose the problem.
At the very least, I'd recommend a logfile somewhere (perhaps in the service executable folder, or preferably somewhere else that's easy to get to and won't run afoul of permissioning issues) and a standard logging method that all your exception-handlers call to write their messages to.

If a service quits unexpectedly because of some exception, I am not sure it would end up in the Event Log automatically.
I would highly recommend a logging suite like log4net for more thorough logging. You'll be able to provide a multitude of logging 'levels' (debug traces to see if you reached some code, info traces for important events, error traces to log exceptions).
You can look here for an example of a EventLogAppender. However, I would suggest starting with getting a FileAppender, one of the easiest logs to create, working first and then add a second appender for the Event Log.

IIS7 restart issue

I have a webservice on one of my websites which restarts the websites app pool.
The problem Im getting is the IIS7 app pool keeps stopping with the following warning and then error:
Warning:
A process serving application pool 'appPoolNameHere' exceeded time limits during shut down.
Error:
Application pool 'appPoolNameHere' is being automatically disabled due to a series of failures in the process(es) serving that application pool.
The code I am using to do this is:
try
{
var serverManager = new ServerManager();
var currentPoolName = SettingsManager.AppPoolName;
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(currentPoolName))
serverManager.ApplicationPools[currentPoolName].Recycle();
HttpRuntime.Close();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
var exceptionManager = ExceptionManagerFactory.GetExceptionManager();
exceptionManager.LogException(ExceptionManager.Severities.Critical, ex,
"App Pool restart failed");
}
I am not getting any exceptions being thrown here, but the app pool is stopping, this doesnt happen all the time and is very hard to replicate, I have tried several different things even just hitting the hell out of that service and sometimes its fine other times it dies.
Is there anything I can do to fix this?
The reason I have to restart it is due to an external config file to the webconfig which deals with the url redirects which is updated from the admin system.
Thanks for any help with this.

Well I seem to have sorted (not fixed) the issue, with some tape and sticky-back-plastic.
The solution
Changed app pool setting: Rapid-Fail Protection to false
This stops IIS from killing the app pool after several failed requests to it.
I also added in retry system, so if the recycle request fails it waits for 10secs and tries again, it will do this 5 times before giving up and sending out an exception notice.
This has fixed the problem, and everything seems to be working well again, although something about this screams this is wrong!! at me.
Only if IIS would monitor other files in a website and restart the app pool when it saw a change.

I didn't work with Microsoft.Web.Administration namespace, but what about unloading application domain and sending request to your website so that to start application again?
Good example (2nd point) by Peter Bromberg how to do this.
Update.
Reading error stack
System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))
at Microsoft.Web.Administration.Interop.IAppHostMethodInstance.Execute()
I thought of most common reason: insufficient rights. All administrative actions require administrative rights. When code above is executed, which user account is impersonated? IUSR? Switch to any admin for that block and it should work without exception.