Runner up – 9/30/09

We have seen the following issue a few times in the last two weeks

 

Issue:

After installing Antigen or recycling the server where we are installed with, Exchange fails to start up. Error is dependency failed to start.

Trying to start Antigen Monitor results in a “%t is not a valid win32 application” message.

 

Cause:

Our paths are not wrapped in quotes in the registry.

Antigen is installed into a path with spaces in it (Program files)

A file matching the first word in the install path is in the root directory.

Example:

0 byte file called program in the root of c:

 

Analysis:

Without wrapping you paths in quotes you run into windows guessing what you mean when you pass it a command

For example

 

C:\program files\Microsoft antigen\exchange\antigenservice.exe

In a normal system would launch antienservice.

In a system with a file called program in the c:\ folder it would launch

C:\program

with the argument files\Microsoft antigen\exchange\antigenservice.exe

 

Solution:

Remove the file that matches the word before the first space (In my example the 0 byte program file)

You can also re-install in a path with no spaces (c:\antigen)

If you remove the file in the root of the drive and it comes back you can use process explorer to trace the creation of the file and then find out what program is dropping files in your root directory.

 

We should also be implementing a fix for this in the next hotfix rollup.