ECE Licensing Service Does Not Start After Reboot

Issue:

After the computer is shut down or restarted, the ECE Licensing Service is stopped. The Worx plugins cannot find a license until someone starts the service by hand in the Services app or Task Manager.


Causes:

  • The service's Startup type is set to Manual or Disabled.
  • The service tries to start before Windows has finished starting the network, and fails.
  • The service starts but stops with an error.


Solution:

Do these steps on the computer that runs the ECE Licensing Service. For a network license that is the license server. For a single-computer license it is the user's own computer.

Set the service to start on its own

  1. Press Windows + R, type services.msc, and press Enter.
  2. Find ECE Licensing Service, right-click it, and choose Properties.
  3. On the General tab, set Startup type to Automatic (Delayed Start). This lets Windows finish starting the network before the service starts.
  4. On the Recovery tab, set First failure, Second failure and Subsequent failures to Restart the Service.
  5. Click OK, then restart the computer to check that the service starts on its own.

If it still does not start, find the cause in Event Viewer

Windows records why a service failed to start.

  1. Press Windows + R, type eventvwr.msc, and press Enter.
  2. Go to Windows Logs > System.
  3. In the right-hand panel, click Filter Current Log. Under Event sources, tick Service Control Manager, then click OK.
  4. Look for Error entries around the time the computer started that mention the ECE Licensing Service. These Event IDs are the ones to look for:
Event ID What it means
7000 The service failed to start
7009, 7011 The service took too long to start and Windows gave up
7022 The service hung while starting
7023, 7024 The service stopped with an error
7031, 7034 The service stopped unexpectedly
  1. Then go to Windows Logs > Application and look around the same time for Error entries with the source Application Error (Event ID 1000) or .NET Runtime (Event ID 1026). These show the service crashed rather than timed out.
  2. Double-click an entry to open it, take a screenshot of the General tab, and send it to ECE Design Support.

To start the service by hand in the meantime, see Restart ECE Licensing Service.


Notes:

  • Event IDs 7009 and 7011 usually mean the computer was still busy starting other programs. Automatic (Delayed Start) normally fixes these.
  • Changing service settings needs administrator rights. Your IT team may need to make the change.