The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is in
correct. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.e
xe tool for more detail.
All went fine until yesterday.. I was ready to start digging using sxstrace and other esoteric tools, learning again about assembly side-by-side loading (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ff951640(v=vs.85).aspx) or searching for a misterios .manifest file that I was sure does not exists there.
Instead I decided to actually.. read what the error message was telling me: ‘Please see the application event log’ 🙂
I was not expecting to find anything there, but, in EventLog/Windows/Application log, was a much more helpful message:
‘Activation context generation failed for “E:\[….]Service.exe”.Error in manifest or policy file “E:\[….]Service.exe.Config” on line 33. Invalid Xml syntax.‘
Looking in the .config file, the problem was obvious: a missing quote (“) at the end of a config setting.. 🙂
Fixed that and the error is gone.
The conclusion.. wtf ?
Tudor Turcu - blog 