Greetings,
We have a VB.NET application running at a big customer that is currently on the 7.5(10) platform on Windows Server 2003. This application is written in Visual Studio 2005 and works as a bridge server monitoring all events and provides an agent greeting service. The customer has a number of CUCM clusters and an even larger number of PGs, and there is an agent greeting service for each CTIOS, running on its own server.
We are upgrading this customer to 8.5.(4) on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 this year and have built a new lab to prototype the end state. There is an additional production lookalike lab that remains unchanged. The new lab is fairly extensive - to mirror production - with duplexed Roggers, two HDS, two Distributo AWs, 4 CUCM clusters, 4 duplexed Agent PGs, 4 CVP Call Servers with two pairs of duplexed PGs, a pair of SIP Proxies, a pair of CUIC servers, Unity Connection, a Calabrio cluster and an Exony cluster. There are three machines dedicated as agent greeting servers to run a port of the existing server-side application.
I have installed the 8.5.4 Toolkit on my build machine and recompiled the applications with the latest Toolkit libraries and deployed to the Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 machine to test. The Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 machine has the 8.5.4 CTIOS Toolkit installed. The application fails to run on the server.
I have also deployed the application to a Windows 7 x32 machine where connects to the 8.5.4 CTIOS and it works perfectly.
On the Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 machine, the program will not start and throws up an dialog. This shows the details of the program (version number) and the "problem signature". The Event Name is CLR20r3 (fairly well known according to Google) and problem ID of System.InvalidOperationException.
I tested the Outbound Soft Phone in the CTIOS Toolkit\Win32 CIL\Samples directory and that works correctly on the server.
If I try the ctiosphone.exe also in the CTIOS Toolkit\Win32 CIL\Samples directory it fails with the same error. I have experimented with running the application in XP compatibility mode, but the same problem occurs.
I checked the BOM and Wndows 7 x64 is supported for CTIOS 8.5 toolkit applications, so I feel that it should be ok on a R2 x64 box.
Has anyone experienced th same problems running CTIOS Toolkit applications on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64? Do you know of a solution?
Any assistance is appreciated.
Regards,
Geoff

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Did you install 8.0(1a) first? From the UCCE 8.5(3) Release Notes here http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cust_contact/contact_center/ipcc_enterprise/ipccenterprise8_5_3/release/notes/icm85_3rlsnts-1.pdf

Release 8.5(3) is a required update if you plan to install Unified CCE on the Windows
Server 2008 R2 operating system. For Windows Server 2008 R2 support, the Unified CCE Release
8.0(1a) major release must first be installed. Service Pack 1 (SP1) of Windows Server 2008 R2 is
required.

I don’t understand why the Outbound Option Softphone works ok but the ctiosphone does not. Does the CTIOS Agent Desktop work on the server?

David,
 
I went to another machine and installed the full CTIOS client from the 8.0.1a installer then applied the 8.5.4 Maintenance Release.
 
Attachments
First screen shot - Agent Soft Phone logged into PG in the not ready state
Second screen shot - trying to run ctiosphone.exe
Regards, Geoff

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Details of the error dialog - I have to scroll to display it all - so three screenshots.

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Thanks David,

I looked at the BOM, naturally. But it’s surely an oversight – with a client focus. No Windows Servers are mentioned at all (for example, Server 2003).

But many customers have built applications to work as “all events bridge” applications and do have them running on servers. My current customer is happily running the current CTIOS application on a number of Windows 2003 Servers.

I’m intrigued by “The only suggestion I have is to check the build settings on your application to ensure it is built for AnyCPU”.

Is that in Visual Studio?

Can you understand why Soft Phone works but ctiosphone.exe does not.

Regards,
Geoff

.

Shannon,

Thanks for chiming in. My thinking also – it specifically says in the BOM that Windows 7 x64 is supported.

Regards,
Geoff

David wrote: “The only suggestion I have is to check the build settings on your application to ensure it is built for AnyCPU”.

OK, I see that in Visual Studio – the setting in the build options under “Advanced Compiler Settings” for “Target CPU”.

It is set to AnyCPU.

Regards,
Geoff

Actually I would try forcing it to x86 instead of any CPU to try and force it to the Wow32 mode. Some things don't like to run in x64 because of the thunk layer or satillite assemblies that are not compatible, but if you specify x86 is will stay a 32bit app and avoid those problems. This is also why you don't run Office 64bit if you want to use cut and paste between apps with OLE. Because the OLE subsystem code is 32 bit assembler code that freezes and even though MS knows it, its to complicated to fix and they have not bothered. They told me do load 32 bit office if I want to cut and paste things like Visio diagrams in my Word docs. There are lots of these little pitfalls and even MS can't escape them.

I ran another CTIOS application I have – this one has no GUI and is console based. Because it runs from the command line, it shows more of what may be happening in trace. It says:

Unhandled Exception: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException (0x80040154): Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {E06D9955-E730-11D4-9D3C-0010B5522A44} failed due to the following error: 80040154.

That seems to imply that it’s not an issue with the x64 architecture, but something amiss with the registration of the COM objects (speculation).

Regards,
Geoff

Shannon,  
 
I owe you a huge vote of thanks for following up and pointing me in the right direction. Holy smoke - this has been just a fantastic exchange.  
 
So in fact I went back into Visual Studio and changed the Target CPU from "AnyCPU" to "x86" and recompiled. The console application stopped throwing the exception, but then revealed an issue reading the registry (under HKL\Software\Hewlett-Packard\xxx) so I had to duplicate the Key under Wow6432Node (and noticed some Cisco keys there, obviously doing the same thing) and change my code to read from that different key. Now the console application worked correctly, employing the Cisco libraries, including CTIOS Logging, where I use this library to control my own trace files.  
 
Then I made similar changes to the GUI that acts as a launcher for the console-based applications and now it appears to work. I will have to do a round of testing of course to ensure that the actual mechanism works with CTIOS 8.5.4 but I'm very happy to do that. Maybe Cisco brought back Single-Step Conference. OK, perhaps that's being too optimistic.  
 
Thank you once again Shannon.  
 
(Looks like Cisco should compile ctiosphone.exe as x86)  
 
Regards, Geoff