Changing the Executable Path of a Windows Service
- Matthew Ullyott
Performing this action requires administrator permissions and involves making changes to the Windows registry using RegEdit.
If any of the RxUniverse or Rx-Suite Windows services are failing to start, the issue could be related to an incorrect path to the service executable. This can occur if RxU or Rx-S is originally installed to one location (Eg: C:\RxUniverse\) but the installation has to be moved to another folder.
In the following scenario, Rx-Suite was originally deployed to C:\sites\. However, the customer now wants it to be deployed to E:\sites\. The example below will only show the steps for the Rx-Hub module, however they are near-identical for the rest of the Rx-Suite modules.
(The path to Ruby will remain the same.)
To check a the executable path of a Windows service, right click on it in the Windows Services Manager, and select “properties”:
Changing this directory requires the use of the RegEdit registry editor. Always be cautious when editing a system’s registry, as any mistakes may lead to system instability.
To launch RegEdit, press Windows (command key) + R on your keyboard to bring up the Run Command Window. Then type “regedit”, and hit enter:
This will launch the Windows Registry Editor:
Before making any changes, it is best practice to export the current registry settings using the “Export” function under the File Menu. Any changes can then be easily reverted using the “Import” function.
Using the file tree menu on the left, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services. This is where the registry settings for Windows Services are defined:
Find the service you wish to modify (in this case Rx-Hub), and click on it to bring up the service properties:
For this process, we are only interested in the “ImagePath” property. Double click on “ImagePath” to edit the property:
Once the desired path has been entered, click “Ok” to update the ImagePath property. The next time the Windows Service starts, it will use the new path:
