One of our customers is reporting that our app started failing after they applied some recently released updates to Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 1 (6.01). They are running in COM under ISAPI. If they remove these updates, the app begins working again:

KB4074880 KB4056894 KB4056568 KB4054998

They've tried twice to reinstall, but each time it triggers the failures.

They sent some error log data, shown below. Has anyone run into issues with recent updates? Some of these may be related to the Meltdown/Spectre issues?

My inclination is just to tell them to update to a less obsolete version of Windows.

--stein

>-----Application Error------
>
>Faulting application name: w3wp.exe, version: 7.5.7601.17514, time
>stamp: 0x4ce7a5f8
>Faulting module name: wc.dll, version: 6.10.0.0, time stamp: 0x58905b8a 
>Exception code: 0xc0000005 Fault offset: 0x00008a67 Faulting process 
>id: 0x1560 Faulting application start time: 0x01d39638a5c7ecaa Faulting 
>application path: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\inetsrv\w3wp.exe
>Faulting module path: \\?\C:\inetpub\wwwroot\WConnect\wc.dll
>
>
>-----End Application Error------
>----Windows Error Reporting----
>
>Fault bucket , type 0
>Event Name: APPCRASH
>Response: Not available
>Cab Id: 0
>
>Problem signature:
>P1: w3wp.exe
>P2: 7.5.7601.17514
>P3: 4ce7a5f8
>P4: wc.dll
>P5: 6.10.0.0
>P6: 58905b8a
>P7: c0000005
>P8: 00008a67
>P9:
>P10:
>
>Attached files:
>
>These files may be available here:
>
>
>Analysis symbol:
>Rechecking for solution: 0
>Report Id: 158e50c8-022b-11e8-9cb5-005056802a0c
>Report Status: 0
>
>
>----End Windows Error Reporting----
>----System WAS Error----
>
>Application pool 'West Wind WebConnection' is being automatically 
>disabled due to a series of failures in the process(es) serving that 
>application pool.
>
>----End System WAS Error----
>-----System WAS Warning-----
>A process serving application pool 'West Wind WebConnection' 
>suffered a fatal communication error with the Windows Process 
>Activation Service. The process id was '6004'. The data field contains 
>the error number.
>-----End System WAS Warning-----

Not sure - there's not enough info there to know what might be happening but clearly there's some sort of very low level changes that causes the ISAPI DLL to blow up. It would be interesting to see if this is happening on other Win2008 servers. It might even be worth checking more recent servers that have these Meltdown/spectre patches. Also checking whether file mode works (ie. it's an issue in the COM subsystem of Windows) would be an interesting data point. But without a lot more info there's really nothing I can do to help even trouble shoot this.

First recourse is my usual recommendation to you (that I also know doesn't work for you): Replace the ISAPI DLL with the managed .NET Handler which removes all the low level C++ code from the equation and most likely wouldn't be failing.

+++ Rick ---

Actually it's not that our app won't run under .NET - I've got it working on our internal development box - but I haven't been able to convince the techs who actually do the customer deployments to make the switch. I guess they don't want to mess with things if a customer is already up and running under ISAPI - if it ain't broke, don't fix it...

But in this case, it is broke so maybe they'll be more open to the idea. I will suggest that as an alternative to upgrading Windows.

FWIW, this is the only one of our 100+ customers who have reported issues with the Intel vulnerabilities patches. Of course we don't know which ones have actually applied the patches, but I have to think a good number of them have. Most of them are running Server 2012 or 2016, and I'm sure if they had run into similar issues, we'd have heard about it.

--stein