Error: Seb failed to start a new session!

[ngz76]

Hi, I installed seb using Windows 10, the installation was fine, but when I open the app, I got an error like this:

I've already uninstalled all antivirus software, turn off windows security but still does not work.
Here is the log files:
2021-10-11_01h16m27s_Runtime.log
2021-10-11_01h16m27s_Client.log
How to fix that?

[dbuechel]

It appears that the application components of SEB can't communicate with each other on your system. Are you using any security / anti-virus software which could block inter-process communication? SEB uses WCF (Windows Communication Foundation), so make sure that the .NET Framework and WCF in particular work on your system.

[mnsosa]

Any solution? I have the same problem.

[dbuechel]

The error message above is generic and may have many causes. Do you have the same error as in the logs attached above or a different one? In either case, please post your log files here so that we may investigate the issue further.

[ciccio1404]

Salve, ho lo stesso identico problema... Chiedendomi di immettere 'password delle impostazioni'. Ha funzionato nei giorni scorsi, ed oggi ha fatto così. Tra 7 giorni devo sostenere il Tolc, come faccio?

[arvemell]

We have the exact issue here. "ERROR: Failed to connect to the runtime. Aborting startup..." There has been about 10-20 students so far with this issue. Tried to reinstall VC++\net frame but still not working :(
Any suggestions?

[dbuechel]

@olegfeferman Excellent news! Just out of curiosity: Would you mind sharing what the exact name conflict was which occurred with your updater service? I thought that I chose the names for the pipes between SEB's components sufficiently careful, but I might have missed something and do need to improve the naming in SEB as well.

[olegfeferman]

@dbuechel For historical reasons we've used base addresses in ServiceHost. So from my point of view you have nothing to fix.

[dbuechel]

@olegfeferman Thanks a lot for your reply. Would you mind elaborating a bit more with regard to the base address you mentioned resp. how that would break the IPC of SEB's components? We had similar issues with SEB 2.x because that version actually used a generic base address, but I tried to remedy this by using a specific base address in version 3.x (namely net.pipe://localhost/safeexambrowser/...).

Is it the case that you used net.pipe://localhost/ as base address and this had the effect of blocking the IPC of SEB? I don't quite understand the root cause of the issue yet and have furthermore seen that these errors are happening quite a bit these days. Thus it would be awesome if you could help me understand the exact root cause so that I can help other users better when they run into the same issue due to another software.

[olegfeferman]

@dbuechel we used net.pipe://localhost/ as base address and then our own name when doing AddServiceEndpoint.

[dbuechel]

Hm, okay, thanks for the clarification. So in that case it appears that this blocks any other application from registering a ServiceHost for net.pipe:localhost, even though the actual path may be different. Not good, but that would explain why there are other support requests with that error since I reckon that there are quite a few applications which (erroneously) use that global base address.

[EliaSchmid]

Hello, I have the same problem.
I need to use the safe exam browser for my exams and am the only one with this problem.
Any fixes?

[dbuechel]

What is the service component and where would I disable it?

I would advise you to try this first: Open the service control panel of Windows, search for "Safe Exam Browser Service" and stop or even disable it. Then try again to start SEB.

Also this Laptop that I am using is brand new and doesn't have anything installed on it so I can't imagine what could be interfering with SEB.

We can't really verify that without having physical access to the machine itself. If you could make a video of how you try to start SEB and / or provide a list of all applications you have installed on your system, then we might get a step further here.

[EliaSchmid]

I would advise you to try this first: Open the service control panel of Windows, search for "Safe Exam Browser Service" and stop or even disable it. Then try again to start SEB.

I tried this, but that didn't fix the problem and resulted in the same error as before. I will attach the new service and runtime logs

We can't really verify that without having physical access to the machine itself. If you could make a video of how you try to start SEB and / or provide a list of all applications you have installed on your system, then we might get a step further here.

I wasn't able to record it at the last exam but this is roughly what happened:

• I downloaded the configuration file for the exam
• I opened the file
• SEB started up and loaded the session for some time
• At about half the progression bar, the error appeared

Is there some easy way to generate a comprehensive list of applications on a system?

[EliaSchmid]

2023-03-02_15h00m55s_Runtime.log
2023-03-02_15h02m28s_Runtime.log
2023-03-02_15h02m28s_Service.log
2023-03-02_15h03m30s_Runtime.log
2023-03-02_15h03m53s_Runtime.log
2023-03-02_15h04m31s_Runtime.log
2023-03-02_15h04m31s_Service.log

Here are the files, I tried to open the session a couple of times. I deactivated my antivirus before downloading the configuration file, then disabled the service component, then opened the file

[omerabdul]

Hi @dbuechel, I'm trying to manage an exam. Could you tell me if the log files are automatically sent to the server side in real time or is it required for the test-taker to manually share logs after session is closed?

[dbuechel]

Please do create a new discussion for topics unrelated to the original question. No, SEB does not communicate with any server applications unless you're e.g. using SEB Server.