OK Stardock. Now I am starting to grow frustrated with this. Still same "Windows could not start the Stardock Start8 service on local computer - Error 193: 0xc1" error.
SERVICES.MSC shows the path to executable as C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Start8\Start8Srv.exe. Registry editor matches these settings. I tried renaming START8 in the system drive folder with no luck as most of the forums recommended with this error.
When I select this Start8Srv.exe file directly in the program folder, the program still doesn't start, so I assumed the path must be incorrect.
When clicking the Start8_64 file, the flag appears and Start8 V1.16 runs perfectly. So, I changed the path to executable file to show C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Start8\Start8_64.exe and I get the same error.
"Windows could not start the Stardock Start8 service on local computer - Error 193: 0xc1"
An interesting thing to point out is that even after I manually select the Start8_64 file and get the program running, SERVICES.MSC still shows the program as not running. Also, when I select Start in Services, I get the same error even though it's already running.
At this point, I'm ready to pull Start8 off both machines, get my $10 bucks back from PayPal and go with another option unless you guys can point me in the right direction here.
End of chris262's quote
The service is a service so you cannot manually start it by running it yourself, likewise setting the path to be a non service will not work. The services screen will also only indicate if the service is running, not Start8 itself. This is why running Start8_64.exe does not change the running status.
From looking online the error would seem to be caused by a file on the HD that's stopping the OS services system from launching the service. This may be c:\program, c:\stardock, c:\program files (x86)\stardock, c:\start8srv etc.
This is the first time I have ever seen anything of this nature reported, so it seems to be something specific to the one machine and almost certainly is an unfortunately named file on the HD which is preventing the OS from locating the files. If I were to guess I would say you have something called c:\program.
As an alternative you can set Start8 to startup with your machine by creating a task via the OS task scheduler on login. Setting it to start Start8.exe or Start8_64.exe on login will allow Start8 to start up for you without using the service.
One other thought, make the path to the service a short file name (c:\progra~1\stardock\start8\start8~1.exe I suspect?). That may allow the OS to ignore the file on the HD that's stopping it from discovering if the service is valid.
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