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
Platform notice: Server and Data Center only. This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms.
Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.
*Except Fisheye and Crucible
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
- 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'.
To launch the service properties dialog, run the following command:
tomcat9w.exe //ES//Confluence
- Instead of having the service properties dialog opened, we will be greeted with the error, as shown in the Summary section of this document.
- 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
- Check the tomcat9x.exe file, inside the <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL>/bin directory, and see what is the size of the file.
- If the file is empty, 0 Mb, we'll need to replace it.
- Go to the page Confluence Server & Data Center Download Archives
- Under the View all versions section, find the Confluence version you're currently running and click to Download.
- In the Choose Operating System option, make sure to select Standalone(ZIP Archive)
- Now, we can replace the files, as follows:
- From the ZIP file, we downloaded, go to the bin directory and copy the tomcat9w.exe file from it.
- Now go to the <CONFLUENCE-INSTALL>/bin directory, remove the existing tomcat9w.exe file and paste the new one.
- Now, when running the command tomcat9w.exe //ES//Confluence from the bin directory, the service properties dialog will open successfully.