UMS won't start in Windows 10 [Solved]

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Daegar
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Jun 22, 2020 1:15 am

UMS won't start in Windows 10 [Solved]

Post by Daegar »

Hi. I've googled this issue and searched the forums, however none of the solutions seem to be working for me. I have a 3-week old Windows 10 64-bit machine, where I initially installed UMS 9.5.0 and it was working fine at first. Then one day it wouldn't launch at all. When clicking on UMS shortcut on desktop nothing happens. No javaw.exe can be seen running in task manager, nothing. I've tried re-installing different versions (tried 8.2.0, 9.5.0 and now 9.6.2), making sure I've deleted all traces of previous install before reinstalling (install folder from Program Files (x86) and UMS folder from ProgramData); with the same result every time. I've never ran UMS as a windows service, so I don't think that's an issue.

Things I've tried so far:
-install JRE (Version 8 Update 251) before (and after) installing UMS - no difference. Tried both 32- and 64-bit
-install UMS without JRE
-running UMS as administrator
-launching UMS.exe from command prompt - no error message of any kind, just nothing happens
-launching UMS.bat from command prompt - without JRE I get an error message "Windows cannot find 'javaw'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again."; with JRE installed I get no error message, but nothing happens
-changing path to javaw.exe within the .bat file (pointing to /jre14-x64/bin/) and running it - no error message and nothing happens
-changing java heap size to 128MB instead of default 1280 in the installer, both with- and without "clean install" options checked

Since the program doesn't launch at all I can't make UMS create any trace logs. I did include the debug.log, which says the same things in every scenario. I'm thinking I might have inadvertently turned off some windows service which UMS might require to run, but haven't found anything related to it. Any help would be appreciated.
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Nadahar
Posts: 1990
Joined: Tue Jun 09, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: UMS won't start in Windows 10

Post by Nadahar »

I've never seen that error before. It fails when trying to initialize the Java GUI components, it seems in particular when trying to create the "border style" to use for Windows.

I can't understand anything else then that this must be an issue between Windows and Java. More recent versions of UMS comes with their own Java installation and doesn't use the one you install. You should download an older version (where you can choose between "standalone" and not), and then not use the "standalone" one. That will make it use the Java you install. You should then have Java 8 64-bit installed.
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SubJunk
Lead Developer
Posts: 3705
Joined: Sun May 27, 2012 4:12 pm

Re: UMS won't start in Windows 10

Post by SubJunk »

I found a lot of references to this:

https://de.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/ ... eating-gui
https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_ ... id=8046391
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/337 ... -exception

and more but no fixes. You can make new versions of UMS run any version of Java by putting the Java files into the folder "C:\Program Files (x86)\Universal Media Server\jre14-x64"
Please let us know if it's a Java version problem so we can change it. We recently updated to the latest version 14
Daegar
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Jun 22, 2020 1:15 am

Re: UMS won't start in Windows 10

Post by Daegar »

Thank you for the replies. I've tried installing Java 64-bit in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Universal Media Server\jre14-x64", and tried installing UMS 8.1.0 - which downloaded and installed Java separately. I've also tried temporarily disabling Windows UAC and Comodo HIPS in case they were causing issues. So far the error persists. I haven't tried using older Java versions yet, going to try that later on today. If that doesn't work, then there's an issue with my Windows somewhere and I'll start looking into that.

Update: it wasn't Java. Tried different 64-bit versions with no luck. Seems it has something to do with Windows.
Daegar
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Jun 22, 2020 1:15 am

Re: UMS won't start in Windows 10

Post by Daegar »

Ok, I found the problem. Turns out it was the UXThemePatcher, which I installed earlier to use custom Windows 10 themes. As soon as I uninstalled it and re-booted, UMS started itself (since it makes itself auto-start by default), and is now showing the GUI and working properly. The clue was Nadahar saying Java was trying to use Windows border style. Guess I have to look for an alternative to use Windows dark themes, but being able to use UMS is more valuable. Thank you both for clearing it up, hopefully this may help someone else in the future.
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