When trying to open the service properties dialog, for Confluence service on Windows, we get an error: Access Denied - This app can't run on your PC

Summary

On Windows, when we try to run the command tomcat9w.exe //ES//Confluence, instead of getting the service window opened as we should, we're greeted with the following error:

Environment

Confluence Server/Data Center running on Windows

Diagnosis

The steps to reproduce this issue are described in this document: Start Confluence Automatically on Windows as a Service

1. Open a command prompt and change the directory to the <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL>/bin directory. Make sure to run the command prompt using 'Run as an administrator'.

2. To launch the service properties dialog, run the following command:

   1 tomcat9w.exe //ES//Confluence

3. Instead of having the service properties dialog opened, we will be greeted with the error, as shown in the Summary section of this document.

4. Checking the tomcat9x.exe file, we can see that it is empty. Its size is 0Mb.

Cause

The cause of this problem is yet unknown.

Solution

1. Check the tomcat9x.exe file, inside the <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL>/bin directory, and see what is the size of the file.

2. If the file is empty, 0 Mb, we'll need to replace it.

3. Go to the page Confluence Server & Data Center Download Archives

4. Under the View all versions section, find the Confluence version you're currently running and click to Download.

5. In the Choose Operating System option, make sure to select Standalone(ZIP Archive)

6. Now, we can replace the files, as follows:

   1. From the ZIP file, we downloaded, go to the bin directory and copy the tomcat9w.exe file from it.

   2. Now go to the <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL>/bin directory, remove the existing tomcat9w.exe file and paste the new one.

7. Now, when running the command tomcat9w.exe //ES//Confluence from the bin directory, the service properties dialog will open successfully.