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My service spawns a process for each core on the target machine using CreateProcessAsUser. The process is a MFC program which has been modified to run using commandline parameters rather than GUI controls. It has run successfully in this scenario since XP. I have two new machines running WIN7 x64 one with 8 cores and one with 12 cores but on both machines 7 processes get created and execute successfully but the 8th process starts and then dies. The process dies on MFC LoadFrame call with no exit code.

I have written my service so it can be run from the command line and when I execute it from the command line as the same user I use in CreateProcessAsUser I can successfully get the 8th 9th 10th etc process to start and execute normally. As you can imagine getting 7 to start makes me think I'm calling CreateProcessAsUser "fairly" correctly. Failing on LoadFrame suggests windows station or desktop problems. Any ideas?

skaffman
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Spud
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  • If it's a command line process why are you creating windows? – Carey Gregory Mar 23 '12 at 13:27
  • Its a common technique when writing a windows service. By adding some code you can run a service either from the service control applet or from the command line. Its a big aid in debugging. The MFC app has been modified so I can get it into the same state as I would by clicking on several dialog boxes. Hope that helps – Spud Mar 24 '12 at 02:04
  • I'm familiar with writing services that can also run as a normal app, but there should be no window creation happening when they're running as a service. It's not entirely clear to me whether or not you're doing that. – Carey Gregory Mar 24 '12 at 20:15
  • The MFC app is a gas and oil simulator which can do calculations which can take a few days to complete. I wrote the service so a master MFC app running on a normal desktop can send messages (via pipes) to several other machines. It is this service which spawns the same MFC app on the slave machines which then communicate with the master to do a piece of the calculation. – Spud Mar 25 '12 at 03:06
  • This spawning of the slave app via CreateProcessAsUser() is what fails after the seventh invocation if the spawning process is running as a service. If we run the spawning app from the commandline it happily creates as many as we want. The spawning app itself creates no windows, but of course the MFC app does. Thanks for your continued interest in my problem – Spud Mar 25 '12 at 03:06

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