IN THE WILD: VOL8 THE ABRAcalypse. When windows updates turn into windows updon'ts.

Hello again Sage Citizens,

Today’s discussion is going to be relatively short and will be addressing another hot item from the practical application world. For the last six months or so, calls have been trickling into the support center regarding not being able to launch the Abrasuite client. The symptoms could be any of the following errors.

a). "abraloader has stopped running"

b). "abraloader has encountered an error and needs to close. "

c). "No error at all." (this one being by far the most frustrating).

I wouldn't be doing anyone any kind of service if i didn't at least mention that these errors could also be related to another problem than the one I'm bringing up today but if you were using the client just fine yesterday, Then all of a sudden today some of the clients (but not all of them) stopped working , especially machines that restarted overnight, then you are likely suffering from the issue at topic.

The problem is there are some Microsoft security updates that have been rolling out that in some cases prevent our application from launching. It's not the fact that we still use the old FOXPRO backbone which Microsoft no longer technically supports but it actually related to the very current and very actively supported group of components called "CLICK ONCE" and ".NET FRAMEWORK'.

The solution here should be pursued as followed to make sure there is not just some simpler option.

1. turn off UAC. (move to bottom, set to never notify).

2. make sure all .net framework components are installed in windows features.

3. make sure the client install was done from the right level (the right level is from either a mapping or a share HIGHER than the client folder such as Abrasuite or even the root of C:).

4. make sure the location of the data is resolvable to the client machine. For example if the data is stored on network drive F:, make sure network drive F: means the same thing to the client machine as it does to the server.

5. make sure when you run the setup.exe that you do a "right-click , run as administrator".

6. If issues still persist, manually run the install of the abrasuite components, vcredist and netlib encryption drivers from the subfolders in the client folder.

If all that fails, then you almost certainly suffering from an issue with the security updates.

So here’s where you start. Below is a list of updates we suspect carry the issue. The mere presence of these updates does not mean you should expect a problem but each of these updates have been proven to be the last thing we removed before we were able to get Abrasuite up and running again.

KB2968294
KB2976627
KB2977629
KB2987107
KB3003057
KB3008923

Once the updates are uninstalled, you can then restart the machine in question and HOPEFULLY launch the Abra Client again. The dilemma then comes up, what do I do about these updates when it comes time to patch again. There is no easy answer on this. We have seen instances where customers went ahead and just reinstalled the updates and for some reason the client continued to work without issue. We’ve also seen at least two incidences where the customer did nothing at all and a subsequent update appeared to fix the issue. We have unfortunately seen a couple where the installation of the updates knocked the client out again. There is no one right answer I have to give. I can share with you though, that this has been brought to the attention of engineering and we are working on this to research what we can do on the company level to address this. The biggest problem to our research though is that we can’t get an example of an item that stays broken long enough for us to do anything about it. If you are in a positon where you have just one machine that isn’t working but the rest of your boxes are working just fine and you have gone over the other steps not involving the MS updates go ahead and reach out to me if you want to volunteer to be patient zero. You can reach me at [email protected]. Just be sure to mention VOL8 of IN THE WILD so I don’t seem confused about your reason for reaching out to me.

If anyone has any questions please bring it to the forum so we can all talk about it. I promise to be as responsive and candid as humanly possible. Or if you want to talk about something off topic, anywhere from how to build awesome select queries to how the season finally of The Walking Dead ended (authors note: I Don’t think Rick killed that doctor guy and I can support that assertion) Just post it.

Thanks and have a great day Sage Citizens.