Cannot install windows service

Question

I have created a very simple window service using visual studio 2010 and .NُET 4.0.

This service has no functionality added from the default windows service project, other than an installer has been added.

If I run "installutil.exe appName.exe" on my dev box or other windows 2008 R2 machines in our domain the windows service installs without issue.

When I try to do this same thing on our customer site, it fails to install with the following error.

Microsoft (R) .NET Framework Installation utility Version 4.0.30319.1
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

Exception occurred while initializing the installation:
System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\TestService\WindowsService1.exe' or one of its dependencies. Operation is not supported. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131515).

This solution has only 1 project and no dependencies added.

I have tried it on multiple machines in our environment and two in our customers. The machines are all windows 2008 R2, both fresh installs. One machine has just .net 2.0 and .net 4.0. The other .net 2, 3, 3.5 and 4.

I am a local admin on each of the machines.

I have also tried the 64bit installer but get the following error, so I think the 32 bit one is the one to use. System.BadImageFormatException

Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks.

Solution 1

You can try to make a Setup Project for your service and run the MSI file on that server.

Solution 2

Another reason for this error might be that you copied your program from a source which windows considers untrusted. You can unblock the assembly by clicking "unblock" after you right-click and select properties on the file.

Solution 3

Need to unblock files. or at least that's what fixed mine.

To do 'bulk' unblock in Powershell

get-childitem *.* | Unblock-File 

or in DOS:

FOR %a in (*.*) do (echo.>%a:Zone.Identifier)

Solution 4

When we copy executable from another computer, Windows mark a flag on them for protection. Right Click on executable and in properties Click Unblock. It would clear flag and service executable would Install.

Solution 5

This issue came about for me because I was trying to install the service from a network location. By copying the service.exe to the local machine prior to using installutil, it fixed my problem and the service installed successfully.

View more solutions

Comments

[Camilo Martin]

Wait... doesn't .NET 4 already include .NET 2/3/3.5?

[Matthew Dalton]

Yes, the service with all frameworks installed for another purpose, i was just illusrating the problem seems to be domain related.

[Matthew Dalton]

The result of that is [SC] CreateService SUCCESS but the service still cannot be started. It complains it cannot find the specified file.

[MKing]

This worked for me and answers the question more directly than the, "try a Setup Project" answer. Both work, but this is more likely the answer to the original question.

[Ross Hambrick]

Thank you! I doubt I would have ever made it to this conclusion. I wish it reported a better reason than "Operation is not supported"

[Snives]

If it won't unblock and it resides in your /Program Files folder then move the .exe to your documents folder, unblock it there, and then move it back. Windows Explorer won't elevate unblock requests in the /Program Files folders.

[Scratz]

Based on question stackoverflow.com/questions/8524423/… One could also set the runtime loadFromRemoteSources element to true in the machine.config.

[doublehelix]

Another useful advice: If you unblock a zip file before extraction, then all extracted files are automatically unblocked. Can save you a lot of work of unblocking them one by one :)

[Srikanth P Vasist]

I added full network share trust also. Still it says cannot find the specified file.

[thepirat000]

This is more a workaround than a real solution to the problem

[c00000fd]

Jeez, this was the easiest fix! Thanks.

[Alan Macdonald]

Remember and unblock any associated DLLs as well as the main exe folks

[user1282609]

What a great solution. Thank you so much.

[Andy]

see the up-voted answer below which should really be marked as the solution

[cja]

This feature doesn't exist in VS 2013

[cja]

Unblocking the individual files didn't work for me. I had to unblock the zip file I downloaded them in.

[Stefan P.]

@cja it does work in VS 2013, you'll have to install it from here visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/…

[Andrew - OpenGeoCode]

Thanks, once again stackoverflow to the rescue - worked for me

[Omni]

Thanks for remind me of that, avoided minutes of frustration

[Rumit Parakhiya]

Just in case somebody needs to do this and have lot of dlls and exe as dependency, you can use powershell command Get-ChildItem | Unblock-File in the directory where service executables are. It'll unblock all files.

[ohager]

YMMD - I lost one year of my life until this helped me out!

[Trevor Daniel]

I had to go to the properties of every file and "Unblock" the file.

[Tommy]

@Andy - life saving advice right there and also a reminder to keep scrolling on SO posts :)

[Peet Brits]

Or simply get-childitem "C:\MyFolder" | unblock-file

[Mike W]

has MS fixed their error message yet? Is anyone aware of an MS ticket open for this? The error message gives you no indication of how to fix the problem.

[Sascha]

That is what he already does and it doesn't solve his problem.

[Volkmar Rigo]

Before creating a setup project, you should consider unblocking the files (as explained in stackoverflow.com/a/5245971/597028)

[cdhowie]

If the files are being transferred to another machine, another easy way to unblock them all at once is to zip up the files, copy over the zip file, unblock the zip file, then extract it. The extracted files will also be unblocked.

[Felipe Oriani]

2018 and still have this problem. Thank you!

[Chromium]

@StefanP. It is really troublesome to create a setup project compared to simply unblocking it...