Resolved Service won't start

Service won’’t start

I decided it was time to clean out my XP Pro installation and I created what is essentially an identical installation on a new drive with the same setup CD. What I want is what I had before, just a clean install without all the accumulated rubbish. However I have run into a problem I don’t understand. I use Polipo with Tor to chain some http proxies. I also run Polipo as a service to avoid clutter on the taskbar. All this works fine on the old XP installation, but for some reason I cannot get an identical copy of Polipo to run as a service on the new installation. It loads about halfway and then just stops. There are no error messages and nothing in the event log. I can’t figure out what the difference is since it works fine on the old installation. I wonder if someone who knows more about this than I do might have any idea what the reason for this behaviour could be?

 

Firewall problem comes to mind.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. There is something else going on here. I am still trying to puzzle it out. Firewall makes no difference and Polipo runs normally when started as an application. When starting as an automatic service I get no response but if I start it manually I get a time-out error after two minutes, regardless of the pipeline timing setting in the registry (I extended it to five minutes as a test). Error says it couldn't start in a 'timely' fashion.

I have noted that there is in fact a difference between the two XP versions in this regard. I used srvany to set up the working service but I did it in a non-standard way and now I can't remember how I got it to work. I have been trying to use the sc command in the other installation and this is the one that doesn't work, though the service appears to install correctly. I guess this is just another one of those Windows mysteries that give us all so much fun. I will keep trying and post the answer if I ever find it.

 

Hi, Just to clarify - you have installed XP Pro from CD to a new drive?
Have you installed all SP's? eg. SP3.
Did you do a Custom install? Neil.

 

Both installations were from the same CD. Both were updated with SP3 and all other security updates issued by Microsoft. Not a custom install. It was placed on a freshly formatted IDE drive on the same computer using the XP boot.ini file to switch between them.

 

The problem is solved. Something in the settings was wrong. I think it had to do with srvany though I'm not certain. I fixed it by using a horrible hack: I simply copied the registry entry from the working computer and overwrote the other one and it suddenly started working normally.