COM+ catalog file permissions

On my Windows 2008 server, I noticed that whenever I tried to navigate through COM+ explorer, the MMC just kept crashing. When I go COM+ MMC, ‘My Computer’ Properties and clicked on “Default Protocols” tab, MMC crashed.

 

Event log had the error message from Application Error event source.

Faulting application mmc.exe, version 6.0.6001.18000, time stamp 0x47918d09, faulting module comuid.dll, version 2001.12.6931.18000, time stamp 0x4791a75e, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x00030ec5, process id 0x%9, application start time 0x%10.

If you attach debugger, callstack of this access violation is follows

0:016>k 200

ChildEBP RetAddr

06cbd744 66d01b5a comuid!CCatalogAccessor::GetPropertyFromObjectAtIndex+0x1b

06cbd75c 66cf0029 comuid!CCatalogAccessor::GetProperty+0x16

06cbdbb0 66cee234 comuid!CPortRangesDlg::SetAccessor+0x66

06cbe3f0 678e1051 comuid!CDefaultProtocolsPage::OnInitDialog+0x32

06cbe3f8 7716f8d2 MFC42u!AfxDlgProc+0x35

06cbe424 7715b894 USER32!InternalCallWinProc+0x23

06cbe4a0 7715b978 USER32!UserCallDlgProcCheckWow+0x132

06cbe4e8 7715ba7b USER32!DefDlgProcWorker+0xa8

06cbe504 7716f8d2 USER32!DefDlgProcW+0x22

06cbe530 7716f794 USER32!InternalCallWinProc+0x23

06cbe5a8 771706f6 USER32!UserCallWinProcCheckWow+0x14b

06cbe5d8 7717069c USER32!CallWindowProcAorW+0x97

So, it was trying to read something from the catalog ...Wanted to rule out any file\registry permission issues and ran process monitor. Noticed that c:\windows\registration folder was being accessed and getting permission denied!

The COM+ catalog files are located in the %windir%\registration folder. On this server, no one had read permissions on that folder.

 

Gave read access permissions to this folder and problem solved. Putting it out there if anyone binged for the callstack or the error message would save a couple of…

 

More Information

Other symptoms and event log errors.

The ‘Network’ icon on the system tray displays ‘Connection Status: Unknown; Access is denied’. This should tell us something is NOT right.

Windows Update server throws errors saying service is not running. How ever, Services.msc shows that it was running. Similar behavior may be observed with Microsoft Forefront Protection Manager agent. Event system logged an event

Event log shows these errors from COM+ Event System

The COM+ Event System detected a bad return code during its internal processing. HRESULT was 80070005 from line 45 of d:\vistasp1_gdr\com\complus\src\events\tier1\eventsystemobj.cpp. Please contact Microsoft Product Support Services to report this error.

When you try to manually start Event System in services MMC, the following event logs will be logged.

The COM+ Event System detected a bad return code during its internal processing. HRESULT was 80010105 from line 202 of d:\vistasp1_gdr\com\complus\src\events\tier2\service.cpp. Please contact Microsoft Product Support Services to report this error.