Problems Installing JIRA applications as a service on Windows 64bit

Symptoms

1. The Windows Service fails to install.

   • The following error messages appear when running the service installation from the command line in tomcat 6:

     1 2 3 4 [2007-11-02 15:21:37\] [402 prunsrv.c\] [error\] The operation completed successfully. [2007-11-02 15:21:37\] [1246 prunsrv.c\] [error\] Load configuration failed

   • And the following error message appear when running the service installation from the command line in tomcat 5.5.x:

     1 2 3 4 5 6 [2011-05-20 03:12:26] [info] Starting service... [2011-05-20 03:12:27] [197 javajni.c] [error] %1 is not a valid Win32 application. [2011-05-20 03:12:27] [994 prunsrv.c] [error] Failed creating java C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_25\jre\bin\server\jvm.dll [2011-05-20 03:12:27] [1269 prunsrv.c] [error] ServiceStart returned 1 [2011-05-20 03:12:31] [info] Run service finished. [2011-05-20 03:12:31] [info] Procrun finished.

2. Alternatively, the Windows Service installs successfully, but this error message appears even with the msvcr71.dll present in the <JIRA-install>/bin directory orthe C:\WINDOWS\system32 directory:

   1 Windows could not start the Apache Tomcat JIRA application on Local Computer. For more information, review the System Event Log. If this is a non-Microsoft service, contact the service vendor, and refer to service-specific error code 0. In Event Viewer there was the error The Apache Tomcat JIRA applicationservice terminated with service-specific error 0 (0x0).

Cause

While Tomcat will run on a 64-bit edition of Windows by running it directly through a 64-bit build of Java, the bundled Tomcat in versions of JIRA standalone 4.4.5 and below is only 32-bit.

Workaround

1. Replace your existing 32-bit Tomcat executable with a replacement 64-bit version downloaded from Tomcat's subversion repository:

   1. Determine the version of Tomcat that is bundled with your JIRA application distribution. From the cmd prompt, cd to the 'bin' subdirectory of your JIRA application installation;

   2. Run:

      1 catalina.bat version

   3. Go to http://tomcat.apache.org/

   4. In the left hand navigation under 'Download', look for the version of tomcat that is bundled with your application;

   5. Under 'Binary Distributions', look for "Core". Download the package '64-bit Windows zip';

   6. Open the zip file and navigate to the 'bin' subdirectory and locate the two files 'tomcat6.exe' and 'tomcat6w.exe';

   7. Copy these two files to the 'bin' subdirectory of your JIRA application installation to overwrite the two existing files;

      ℹ️ Create a backup of the existing files first.

   8. For each of the two files, go to properties and select 'Run this program as an administrator'

   9. Update the PATH environment variable. If you have downloaded the JDK, ensure you have both the <jdk_home>/bin and <jdk_home>/jre/bin directories in your system PATH environment variable. See Setting the JAVA_HOME Variable in Windows for instructions on how to set these.

      ℹ️ Note that the JAVA_HOME variable and the PATH are different entities but are configured in the same place. The link above will give you directions on where to set these.

2. Point your Windows Service to a JAVA 64-bit installation;

   1. Open the Windows Services via Command Line as in the instructions of this documentation (expand Windows Service section);

   2. Into the JAVA properties screen, click on the Java tab to see the list of current start-up options;

   3. Edit the Java Virtual Machine to point to the jvm.dll file of a JAVA 64-bit installation:

      

Resolution

Upgrade your JIRA application to the latest version, as 5.0 and onwards have 64-bit Windows installers, as per our Upgrading JIRA applications docs.