Fatal Execution Engine Error (7A097706)(80131506)

Question

I have built a Windows Service using VS 2008 targeting Framework 3.5. When I install and attempt to run the service on my workstation, it crashes with a .NET Framework error with the following details:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: .NET Runtime
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1023
Date: 2/5/2010
Time: 11:40:48 AM
User: N/A
Computer: SP901601
Description: .NET Runtime version 2.0.50727.3053 - Fatal Execution Engine Error (7A097706) (80131506)

Then, another error:

Event Type: Error
Event Source: .NET Runtime 2.0 Error Reporting
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 2/5/2010
Time: 11:40:48 AM
User: N/A
Computer: SP901601
Description: Faulting application MyService.exe, version 1.0.0.0, stamp 4b6c5757, faulting module mscorwks.dll, version 2.0.50727.3053, stamp 4889dc18, debug? 0, fault address 0x0001c2b7.

I have rebuilt the service project from scratch, rebuilt the setup project from scratch, removed and reinstalled the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 from my workstation, tried running as Local System as well as a specific domain account, and none of these things have solved the problem.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

This is an exception generated by the CLR when it detects that the garbage collected heap is corrupted. The most typical source of this kind of corruption is unmanaged code writing to, say, a managed array and overflowing the array boundary.

If you have no idea what unmanaged code might be doing this then you're in for a pretty rough ride debugging this. Fwiw, virus scanners are pretty notorious for this, especially products from Symantec.