I lost a lot of time hunting some ghosts, but inevitably turned to ProcMon for answers .
You can skip the ghost hunting part, but I think it is interesting too!

Since this is not a trick game, with my CSS background, the 1st thing I would do is to use process monitor to monitor the run.

From process monitor, there was no failure on file or registry loading. The last registry place before exit in resource related entries. The last API is LoadString.

With this information, I launched the application inside debugger and monitored the LoadString call.

The LoadString was called twice before exit. I changed the error handling behavior for the 2nd call of the LoadString, and the application did not exit any more.

Based on above, I would suggest the “customer” to double check the resources. I would give the resource ID to the customer as a clue. (something like 0×67? I closed my debugger when writing this)

It took me about 15 mins total time. ProcessMonitor is always the best tool to start with for such kind of problem.

Thanks for the reply.

Okay, so no contact with the developers – check.

My steps would be to ensure is whether the app is compatible with the Operated System that its been run from. I re-read the blog post and you mentioned 32 bit. My work machine is running windows 7 64 bit, so my “assumption” (now only if I had 32-bit VM lying around so I could test my theory) would be the application won’t start due to incompatibility.

Thanks,
Michael

But I will add another hint to the challenge.

Before I go further am I on the right track?

So, what else can you do?

I tried the following to figure why the application won’t start –

1. Double click, “TheApp.exe” – doesn’t start.
2. Right and run as administrator – doesn’t start.
3. Access Event Viewer logs and see if the application is logging any error logs. – there were no logs available.
4. Copy the “TheApp.exe” into a new folder without the dll file – doesn’t start.
5. Try to run “TheApp.exe” in different compatibility modes – doesn’t start.

My next steps would then be finding out if the application requires dll or runtime software for in order for me to run it. If not, I would then go consult with the developer.

Not sure if this what you were looking for but I would be interested in how you would approach this exercise.

Thanks,
Michael

What else could cause an application to not launch?

I tried it with debugger and I did not see any exception.
From the last callstack, the exit is called by the application. For me, it seems existing is the intentional behavior.