IntelliTrace stand-alone collector - c#

I would like to set up min winforms app to use the IntelliTrace stand-alone collector.
Iv downloaded the application but I cant seem to find how I set it up to winforms.
It should be in this link I guess, but I dont quite understand: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh398365(v=vs.110).aspx
Does anyone have any advice? Im trying to google to find examples without luck.
Best regards
Rob

I have a powershell script that I use to collect traces from console applications. This should be the same for winforms (I've tested it against WPF application and it works). The only step I'm not sure on is what "Collection Plan" you need - this might take a lot of experimentation.
Good Luck!
#1) Create a C:\IntelliTrace and place this script in there
$ROOT_DIR = $PSScriptRoot
#2) Extract the intellitrace cab file to C:\IntelliTrace\IntelliTraceCollection folder
#3) Where is the path to the winforms executable?
$Prog = "C:\path\to\my\winformsApplication.exe"
#4) Where do you want to save the trace?
$OutputLog = "$ROOT_DIR\MyTrace.iTrace"
#Note use of relative paths
$IntelliTraceStandAlone = "$ROOT_DIR\IntelliTraceCollection\IntelliTraceSC.exe"
#YOU WILL MOST LIKELY NEED A DIFFERENT COLLECTION PLAN
$collectionPlan = "$ROOT_DIR\IntelliTraceCollection\collection_plan.ASP.NET.default.xml"
#5) Run it..
#Note "dot space $IntelliTrace..."
. $IntelliTraceStandAlone launch /logfile:$OutputLog /collectionplan:$collectionPlan $Prog

Download Intellitrace standalone collector
Double click on the .exe file
Put the IntelliTraceCollectio.cab file in a folder.
For example D:\Intellitrace
Open command prompt as an administrator
Go to specified path of IntelliTraceCollectio.cab
and enter the command
expand /f:* IntelliTraceCollection.cab .
(Don't forget to put . at end)
Using command prompt,
enter
icacls "D:\IntelliTrace" /grant
(D:\Intellitrace is the path of your folder as specified above)
Create one more folder as D:\IntelliTraceLog (To store the collected intellitrace log file)
To collect data from an application, enter command
D:\Intellitrace\IntelliTraceSC.exe launch /cp:"D:\Intellitrace\collection_plan.ASP.NET.default.xml" /f: "C:IntelliTraceLog\MyApp.itrace" "D:\xyz\abc.exe"
(D:\xyz\abc.exe is the actual path of your file you want to run)
Now you will get an itrace file in D:\IntelliTraceLog. Open it in visual studio enterprise. Select any exception and click on Run Debugging.

You need to use IntelliTrace stand-alone collector to launch your WinForm application. You can find the reference from the link you posted https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh398365.aspx#BKMK_Collect_Data_from_Executables
PowerShell cmdlet is for web application or sharepoint application. For other managed application, the command you should use is
<FullPathToIntelliTraceCollectorExecutable> \IntelliTraceSC.exe launch /cp: <PathToCollectionPlan> /f: <FullPathToITraceFileDirectoryAndFileName> <PathToAppExecutableFileAndFileName>

Related

Process.Start() exits right away on Windows 7

Process.Start("d:/test.txt"); //simple .txt file works perfectly fine on Windows 8 onward but on Windows 7 (x64) it starts the process and immediately closes it.
I've already tried the following:
Calling through ProcessStartInfo and setting CreateNoWindow=true, UseShellExecute=true and Verb="runas" (though not sure why I had to set this one).
Tried attaching Exit event and it confirms that the process does start but it exits right away and I don't even see the Notepad window open for a blink of a second.
Edit: I've tried it with an image files and few other extensions and they open just perfect. Something wrong with just the .txt files (and/or probably other formats).
I was able to solve this bug just by changing build platform from AnyCPU to specifically x64 (my target machine is x64). This is strange but it solved the problem! Thanks Simon Mourier for this tip.
Its definitely an issue with file association. I have tried it windows 7 and it works fine. Try double clicking on the file and check if it opens in notepad, if it doesn't then configure it to open via notepad.Also you should check the exception that it throws,
If File association is missing then it will launch the Openwith dialog.
If it is associated with wrong program then you can change it manually.
If you want to find association type pragmatically then, I would suggest looking at this answer.
How to I get file type information....
You're saying your code is working fine in other OS and other file formats even in Win 7.
Let's try following checks to verify if things are correct
Verify if notepad.exe is in path
Start -> Run -> notepad.exe should launch Notepad
Double click on a .txt file and see if it automatically opens in Notepad
Verify if Process.Start("notepad.exe") starts an instance of Notepad
var process = Process.Start(file used in step 2); and verify the returned process info in the debug mode and see if says the newly created process is still running or not.
I've had this happen on Windows 7 before. It's likely that your Path environment variable has become corrupted. The maximum number of characters that can be used in the Path variable is 2047. Installing many executables on your machine can overflow the Path variable. Here is a SO discussion that shows some ideas to get around it:
How do you avoid over-populating the PATH Environment Variable in Windows?
If you just need to get notepad running again quickly, you can modify the Path environment variable and just put the system location to Notepad at the beginning of the variable. (ex. "c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe").
And if you're not sure how to modify your Path variable, here is a good how-to:
http://geekswithblogs.net/renso/archive/2009/10/21/how-to-set-the-windows-path-in-windows-7.aspx
What about just using
Process.start("start", "d:\\test.txt")
or
Process.start("explorer", "d:\\test.txt")
or
Process.start("cmd", "/c notepad.exe d:\\test.txt")
If it still doesn't work, try using the straight shellexecute, as described here
Executing another program from C#, do I need to parse the "command line" from registry myself?
https://www.gamedev.net/topic/310631-shellexecuteex-api-call-in-c/

start .net application from start menu search

bla.exe (application alias) points to a .net application called wpfapp1.exe.
When i add a key&value to eg. this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\bla.exe
and then start application using Run -> bla.exe it starts
however when i start application using windows search i get an "windows cannot find wpfapp1.exe. make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again."
I have successfully identified problem: this error only occurs to .net applications while native one start normally (eg. firefox.exe).
So is there any .net config that i've missed during development?
From MSDN:
The App Paths key is not used when
computing the DLL search path.
Maybe you're missing some dependent DLL...
I don't really understand your "points to" or if Windows search is specific to using the explorer search or using the start menu search.
I've had a similar problem with another application that the search could not find at all, neither in Explorer or Start menu (since it did not have an indexed folder to locate it) and solved it with a simple shortcut.
If you can create a shortcut of your application in your start menu or some other indexed folder, like a %PATH% folder, Windows search should be able to pick it up and then you can name your shortcut to whatever you want, for instance bla.exe.

problem in case of window service

i made a windows service & add project installer.in which only contain this code.
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(#"C:\Windows\system32\notepad.exe"); inside the timer tick event & interval is 60 sec.i just wanted to try to run Windows service.
1st-serviceProcessInstaller1 i have been changed its account setting as local system.
2nd-serviceInstaller1 in this case i have been changed its start up type as Automatic.
then i create a setup add another project then right click add project output then add primary output then press ok.
then go to Right click on project->view->custom Action->right click on Install->Add custom Action->select Application folder & add primary output.the same thing done for all the remaining options like commit,rollback,uninstall.
after that i build the setup it build succesfully then i install the setup it installed properly into program file n create one .exe file n one Instalfile.
but problem is that when i search the service into "services.msc" the service is not there.
means service is not showing there.i tried but not getting the ans.plz help me to solve this problem.
Not the answer to your original question, but
Starting an application with a GUI from a service is a bad idea (tm) and won't work in the majority of cases
Check what kind of Timer you use. .Net provides 3 Timer classes, not all of them work in a service (because they depend on a window's message loop, iirc)
To test any service: Why don't you go for the installutil binary first (bypassing the setup project)? You find it in your framework directory, for example in "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727".
I'd suggest trying to install the assembly manually to see if you get any kind of error message.
Just open a Visual Studio command prompt and run InstallUtil.exe [YourService].exe. At least you'll know if it installed properly.
Even better option is to use the command line tool sc.exe
Try "sc create /?" on command line and see its options.
You can then use "sc start " , "sc stop " & "sc query " to control service. You can use sc.exe to send custom command to the service. Check windows event log for errors related to service installation. It may be .Net version used to create it is not on target machine.

c# program works from cmd prompt but not run separately?

I would post a snippet, but I honestly have no idea what part of my code could possibly be doing this. The program is sizable, I don't want to make you all wade through it. What kinds of things could possibly be the cause of this? Everything works perfectly when called from the command prompt: "readoo.exe". But when I click the exe in its file. . . "readoo.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. . ."
this is intended to eventually be a scheduled task -> i'm worried, will it work?
i've never debugged, all i've ever used is notepad. I am learning, and feel that this strengthens my understanding of a project.
it crashes nearly immediately. there are no shortcuts, though the file paths are relative.
trying this method: shortcut -> properties -> shortcut -> Start In. I don't have a "shortcut" option
my program reads log files, parses, and creates 4 new files based on the found content
Microsoft Error Report says file not found. But how can this be? the files are there, albeit relative.
Take a copy of your project, and then start hacking bits out of it. When it no longer crashes, you've removed the bit causing the problem.
At what point does it fail when you double-click on it? Immediately, or only when you take a certain action?
You could also add a lot of logging to it, which could indicate where the problem is too.
This is probably looking for a dll that it can't find or is finding a different version from what it wants.
You could try Process Monitor or Process Explorer from sysinternals to see what dlls it loads when it does work and where it finds them.
Try putting a System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break()call as the first thing in Main() and you'll be asked to attach a debugger - this should definitely show you what is different betweent the 2 invocations.
I would start with identifying what is different in the two methods of execution. Is there a shortcut modifying anything?
The starting directory?
The execution account?
command line arguments?
There are 2 things that it could be:
The current directory could be different when you click on the program or run from the command prompt.
The settings and path could be different when you click on the programe you are using the standard command prompt, are you opening the visual studio command prompt when you run the program from the prompt.
If your application relies on some file that should be on the same path of that exe, that can occurr.
You will have to change the properties of the exe (or shortcut to the exe) to "Start In" the directory where your exe is. For a shortcut, right click on the shortcut -> properties -> shortcut -> Start In.
I guess that is what I think could be the cause.
EDIT: Add a Console.ReadLine towards the end of your code to make it pause for you to see any exception thrown. That should help when you run it using windows explorer.
Put a try/catch around your code and output the exception message to the console in the catch block. That should give you some clues.

Allow access permission to write in Program Files of Windows 7

My application throws 'Access denied' errors when writing temporary files in the installation directory where the executable resides. However it works perfectly well in Windows XP. How to provide access rights to Program Files directory in Windows 7?
EDIT:
How to make the program ask the user to elevate rights? (ie run program with full admin rights)
Your program should not write temporary files (or anything else for that matter) to the program directory. Any program should use %TEMP% for temporary files and %APPDATA% for user specific application data. This has been true since Windows 2000/XP so you should change your aplication.
The problem is not Windows 7.
You can ask for appdata folder path:
string dir = Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData);
or for TEMP path
string dir = Path.GetTempPath()
Your program has to run with Administrative Rights. You can't do this automatically with code, but you can request the user (in code) to elevate the rights of your program while it's running. There's a wiki on how to do this. Alternatively, any program can be run as administrator by right-clicking its icon and clicking "Run as administrator".
However, I wouldn't suggest doing this. It would be better to use something like this:
Environment.GetFolderPath(SpecialFolder.ApplicationData);
to get the AppData Folder path and create a folder there for your app. Then put the temp files there.
Options I can think of:
Run entire app as full admin priv. using UAC
Run a sub-process as full admin for only those things needing access
Write temporary files elsewhere
Add new item in the project: Application Manifest and save it.
Now open this file and look for <requestExecutionLevel>. It must be set to asInvoker.
Change it to highestAvailable. Now on executing your application, a prompt will appear asking for permission. Click yes!
Thats all :) now you can write and read from the system32 or any other file which requires admin right
You can verify your application by sigcheck.
sigcheck.exe -m yourapp.exe
And in the output check for element requestedExecutionLevel.
Another way round it would be to stop UAC then restart it. Create a CMD file with the following code;
Rem Stop UAC
%windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
rem force reboot
Start ShutDown /R /F /T 30
You'll need to right click on the CMD file and use run as admin. once you have finished what you are doing restart UAC with the following code (no need to use run as admin this time);
%windir%\System32\reg.exe ADD HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v EnableLUA /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
rem force reboot
Start ShutDown /R /F /T 30
The down sides to using this method is have to right click and use run as admin to close UAC down and you have to reboot for it to take effect.
BTW there are several reasons why you would need to write to the forbidden areas...the first two that springs to mind would be to run a batch file to append host to prevent your browser going to dodgy sites or to copy license keys in a silent install.
You can't cause a .Net application to elevate its own rights. It's simply not allowed. The best you can do is to specify elevated rights when you spawn another process. In this case you would have a two-stage application launch.
Stage 1 does nothing but prepare an elevated spawn using the System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo object and the Start() call.
Stage 2 is the application running in an elevated state.
As mentioned above, though, you very rarely want to do this. And you certainly don't want to do it just so you can write temporary files into %programfiles%. Use this method only when you need to perform administrative actions like service start/stop, etc. Write your temporary files into a better place, as indicated in other answers here.
I cannot agree with arguments, that it is better to write all files in other directories, e.g., %APPDATA%, it is only that you cannot avoid it, if you want to avoid running application as administrator on Windows 7.
It would be much cleaner to keep all application specific data (e.g. ini files) in the same folder as the application (or in sub folders) as to speed the data all over the disk (%APPDATA%, registry and who knows where else). This is just Microsoft idea of clean programming. Than of course you need registry cleaner, disk cleaner, temporary file cleaner, ... instead of e+very clean practice - removing the application folder removes all application specific data (exep user data, which is normally somewhere in My Documents or so).
In my programs I would prefer to have ini files in application directory, however, I do not have them there, only because I cannot have them there (on Windows).
I think there is an alternate solution to all these problems....
Make an two level application. As said above...
1) Launcher which will launch another Main App using code such as (VB)
Call ShellExecute(hwnd, "runas", App.Path & "\MainApp.exe", 0, 0, vbNormalFocus)
2) Main App, which is writing to protected areas, ie Program Files folder
I've successfully tried this with windows 7
I'm also developing an app which has online update feature. But it doesn't work in Vista/W7..
I agree with other peoples about Microsoft Policies and Standard Practices.
But my Question is ..
1) How to apply update to an existing application, which probably always remain in Program Files folder.
2) There might be some way to do this, otherwise how goolge updater, antivirus updater or any software updater workes?
I need answer to my questions..... :o
Prof. Rajendra Khope
(MIT, Pune, India)
If you have such a program just install it in C:\, not in Program Files. I had a lot of problems when I was installing Android SDK. My problem got solved by installing it in C:\.
I was looking for answers. I found only one.
None of these work for me. I am not trying to write temporary files, unless this is defined as nonsystem files. Although I am designated the admin on my user profile, with full admin rights indicated in the UAC, I cannot write to program files or windows. This is very irritating.
I try to save an image found online directly to the windows/web/wallpaper folder and it won't let me. Instead, I must save it to my desktop (I REFUSE to navigate to "my documents/pictures/etc" as I refuse to USE such folders, I have my own directory tree thank you) then, from the desktop, cut and paste it to the windows/web/wallpaper folder. And you are telling me I should do that and smile? As an admin user, I SHOULD be able to save directly to its destination folder. My permissions in drive properties/security and in directory properties/security say I can write, but I can't. Not to program files, program files (86) and windows.
How about saving a file I just modified for a game in Program Files (86) (name of game) folder. It won't let me. I open the file to modify it, I can't save it without first either saving it to desktop etc as above, or opening the program which is used for modifying the file first as admin, which means first navigating all the way over to another part of the directory tree where I store those user mod programs, then within the program selecting to open file and navigate again to the file I could have just clicked on to modify in the first place from my projects folder, only to discover that this won't work either! It saves the file, but the file cannot be located. It is there, but invisible. The only solution is to save to desktop as above.
I shouldn't have to do all this as an admin user. However, if I use the true admin account all works fine. But I don't want to use the real admin account. I want to use a user account with admin rights. It says I have admin rights, but I don't.
And, finally, I refuse to store my portables in %appdata%. This is not how I wish to navigate through my directory tree. My personal installations which I use as portables are stored in the directory I create as a navigation preference.
So, here is the tried and true answer I have found:
From what I have seen so far.... unless one uses the real admin account, these permissions just aren't ever really available to any other user with admin privileges in the Windows Vista and Windows 7 OS's. While it was simple to set admin privileges in Windows XP, later versions have taken this away for all but those who can comfortably hack around.
While M$ "best practices" is to not write data into the %programfiles% folder; I sometimes do. I do not think it wise to write temporary files into such a folder; as the TEMP environment variable might e.g. point to a nice, fast, RAM drive.
I do not like to write data into %APPDATA% however. If windows gets so badly messed up that one needs to e.g. wipe it and reinstall totally, perhaps to a different drive, you might lose all your settings for nearly all your programs. I know. I've done it many times. If it is stored in %programfiles%, 1) it doesn't get lost if I e.g. have to re-install Windows on another drive, since a user can simply run the program from its directory, 2) it makes it portable, and 3) keeps programs and their data files together.
I got write access by having my installer, Inno Setup, create an empty file for my INI file, and gave it the users-modify setting in the [Files] section. I can now write it at will.
I am working on a program that saves its data properly to %APPDATA%, but sometimes, there are system-wide settings that affect all users. So in these situations, it HAS to write to the programs installation directory.
And as far as I have read now, it's impossible to temporarily get write access to one directory. You can only run the whole application as administrator (which should be out of the question) or not be able to save that file. (all or nothing)
I guess, I will just write the file to %APPDATA% and launch an external program that copies the file into the installation folder and have THAT program demand admin privileges... dumb idea, but seems to be the only practical solution...
You can add an access to IIS User for folders of Website or Web Application that you want write or rewrite in it.
It would be neater to create a folder named "c:\programs writable\" and put you app below that one. That way a jungle of low c-folders can be avoided.
The underlying trade-off is security versus ease-of-use. If you know what you are doing you want to be god on you own pc. If you must maintain healthy systems for your local anarchistic society, you may want to add some security.

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