Windows Service doesn't always start: networking not available?

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Install the service in the usual way on (many) managed PCs via standard 
scripted software deployment means;
2. Restart those PCs;
3. Observe that on *some* PCs, the service does not start.  On others it starts 
just fine.

(I appreciate that these aren't technically steps to 'reproduce' the problem, 
but that's what I'm seeing)

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

On a subset of PCs, the Windows Service evtsys does not start: it shows the 
message "Aug 20 13:51:18 PCNAME Connecting socket for LogHost1 (LOGHOST:514) 
failed with error 10051: A socket operation was attempted to an unreachable 
network." in Event Log. (Where PCNAME and LOGHOST are sanitized for this report)

In this state, the PC boots without starting the evtsys service.  It can be 
started manually without any issue after logging in, however.

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?

Windows 7 64-bit, evtsys 4.4.3 64-bit

Please provide any additional information below.

The above happens in a Windows 7 environment where the Windows PCs are 
identical software-wise (deployed from the same single disk image), but may 
have different hardware.  I'm speculating, but it seems that for some PCs, 
networking starts too late which is why evtsys shows an "unreachable network" 
error.

I tried working around the problem in various ways:

1. Manually adding a dependency on the 'netlogon' service, presuming that this 
should require the network to be sufficiently 'up' for evtsys to see the 
network, but this didn't seem to help;

2. Switching the service startup from 'Automatic' to 'Automatic (delayed)': 
this worked in the sense that evtsys started OK, but all the messages from 
early in the boot process are valuable to me and these are missed out if I 
configure it this way.

Any advice on how I can configure this differently to work around these issues?

Original issue reported on code.google.com by omega.am...@gmail.com on 20 Aug 2012 at 1:41

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I made a (not perfect) workaround. It works but ideally the service could 
probably be started earlier in the boot secuence to capture more of the events.

1/ I added "sc start EvtSys" to the GPO startup-script. This starts the service 
as group policy processing runs.

2/ Edited the EvtSys service startup type to auto-delayed, to catch the rare 
event that group policy processing fails for some reason.

Original comment by ibrahim....@gmail.com on 8 Oct 2012 at 9:22

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I'm going to be putting a lot of effort into the utility over the next two 
months, so hopefully I can find a proper solution to the issue. I still haven't 
been able to replicate it, but I'll try doing some research on the underlying 
cause. Thanks for posting your "workaround".

Original comment by sherwin....@gmail.com on 8 Oct 2012 at 6:03

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Sounds great that the project is "Alive".

I have a machine where the problem is consistent.

It's a virtual Windows Server 2008R2, 64-bit, running on ESXi. It's a member 
server with the "Remote Destop Services" feature activated (Terminal Services).

If you need beta-testers I would like to give a hand!

Original comment by ibrahim....@gmail.com on 9 Oct 2012 at 9:08

[GoogleCodeExporter]

As I mentioned in my original report, I can find some systems on which the 
problem can be reproduced too.  Am happy to help test new code, certainly.

Original comment by omega.am...@gmail.com on 9 Oct 2012 at 9:43