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Upgrade Failing (14.x) due to SMWebSvr service install
Problem reported by Antony - 6/26/2015 at 9:43 AM
Submitted
Have this occur with the last 3 upgrades on 2 windows 2012 servers. 
As we use IIS we stop and disable the SMWebSvr service on the servers.  When upgrading we are seeing the following error occur
"Error 1923. Service SmarterMail Web Server (SMWebSvr) could not be installed.  Verify that you have sufficient priviledges to install system services."
Aborted installed did roll back.  Smartermail web server service lost settings only showing entries in Name, Description and LogIn As columns.  cannot view properties because 'file cannot be found'.
via admin cmd ran sc remove SMWebSvr then reran the installer and upgrade completed including the install of the SM services.
 
This last upgrade (14.0.5647) on one server we set the SMWebSvr service to Auto and started it then ran the installer to do the upgrade.  Just before the stopping of the services stage the installer threw error "setup launcher Unicode has stopped working", clicked the "check for solution and close" option and the installer continued to completion with none of the service error.
 
Looks there might be something a bit screwy with the logic relating to the services in the installer.  Anyone else seeing this?
 
Antony

8 Replies

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Joe Burkhead Replied
I had the exact problem on the initial install. Mine was due to not restarting the server after uninstalling the prior version. It isn't well documented from SmarterTools, but anytime you uninstall a version during an upgrade, you MUST restart before installing the new version.
 
After I uninstalled, then rebooted, the new version installed successfully.
 
Again, I had your exact error messages and symptoms. Hope this is what your problem is too, the fix is easy.
 
Joe
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Antony Replied
HI Joe
Thanks for the input.
My issue though is that for the last few upgrades the installer hung on upgrade of the SMWebSvr component which then resulted in having to do a roll back.
The actual upgrade is failing.
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Wolf Tombe Replied
I'm having the exact same error and now I'm down hard. Did anyone ever find a way to resolve this???
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Antony Replied
Hi Wolf, only way to fix I know is to allow the installer to roll back. Then manually remove the remnants of the service. Then reboot. Then do an install.
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Russ Miller Replied
I'm still having that same issue. I have to restart the server and then re-initiate the setup and then it works.
2
Leighton Ridgard Replied
I had same problem upgrading from 14.2 to 14.3. The install failed installing SMWebSvr. I am also using IIS, so just like Antony, I don't need the SMWebSvr to be running. The problem seems to be that when it tries to install the files for the service it fails because the service was not removed. Sadly the rollback also removes the previous 14.2 files thus leaving the Smarter Mail completely dead. More sadly is that it removes the files for the service but leaves the service configured. So the SMWebSvr service shows up in the services list but you cant do anything with it there because the executable files are now gone.
 
The solution is to manually remove the SMWebSVR service before the install (on my system a reboot was not required ... Windows server 2012). The service can be removed by using: "SC delete SMWebSvr" at a command prompt. After this is done the 14.3 installer works fine.
 
This is clearly a bug in the installer that has existed for some time.
 
And the rollback is way too aggressive. It removes files that it overwrote during the install thus removing the files that you needed to run the previous version. After rollback your system is dead anyway so why bother with rollback.
 
Leighton
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Brian Ellwood Replied
It is widely known and documented that you need to reboot after uninstalling to remove ANY file locks.
 
Personally I do the following:
 
1) stop IIS
 
2) stop the mail service
 
3) wait about 15 seconds or so for any file locks to flush
 
4) uninstall
 
5) reboot
 
6) reinstall
 
I've not once had an issue since I've adopted this "procedure"
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Kārlis Gaņģis Replied
For some reason I also had to go and stop the service manually. Strangely that had to be done after removing the service from the command line. As soon as I pressed "Stop" it vanished from the service list and the installation completed correctly.

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