Blue Iris partially gone, can't repair

[war4peace]

Hello everyone,

The weirdest thing happened on my PC.
Blue Iris seems to have ceased functioning on December 18th, at around 11:14 PM local time. CodeProject.AI shows the last entry as below:

Code: Select all

23:14:20:Object Detection (YOLOv5 6.2): Rec'd request for Object Detection (YOLOv5 6.2) command 'custom' (...68526f) took 69ms

Blue Iris data folder shows last DB update at 11:08 PM, same date. Most recent alert file timestamp is also 11:08 PM. "New" folder - same most recent file timestamp.
In the Blue Iris installation folder, BlueIris5.exe is gone. Completely missing. Gone.
Looking at Event Viewer, there are two relevant entries:

The Blue Iris Service service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 1000 milliseconds: Restart the service.

Code: Select all

Log Name:      System
Source:        Service Control Manager
Date:          12/18/2023 11:14:22 PM
Event ID:      7031
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      WAR-NEW
Description:
The Blue Iris Service service terminated unexpectedly.  It has done this 1 time(s).  The following corrective action will be taken in 1000 milliseconds: Restart the service.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="Service Control Manager" Guid="{555908d1-a6d7-4695-8e1e-26931d2012f4}" EventSourceName="Service Control Manager" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="49152">7031</EventID>
    <Version>0</Version>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>0</Task>
    <Opcode>0</Opcode>
    <Keywords>0x8080000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2023-12-18T21:14:22.2632222Z" />
    <EventRecordID>9708</EventRecordID>
    <Correlation />
    <Execution ProcessID="1604" ThreadID="22796" />
    <Channel>System</Channel>
    <Computer>WAR-NEW</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data Name="param1">Blue Iris Service</Data>
    <Data Name="param2">1</Data>
    <Data Name="param3">1000</Data>
    <Data Name="param4">1</Data>
    <Data Name="param5">Restart the service</Data>
    <Binary>42006C007500650049007200690073000000</Binary>
  </EventData>
</Event>

Code: Select all

Log Name:      System
Source:        Service Control Manager
Date:          12/18/2023 11:14:23 PM
Event ID:      7000
Task Category: None
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      WAR-NEW
Description:
The Blue Iris Service service failed to start due to the following error: 
The system cannot find the file specified.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="Service Control Manager" Guid="{555908d1-a6d7-4695-8e1e-26931d2012f4}" EventSourceName="Service Control Manager" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="49152">7000</EventID>
    <Version>0</Version>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>0</Task>
    <Opcode>0</Opcode>
    <Keywords>0x8080000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2023-12-18T21:14:23.2732599Z" />
    <EventRecordID>9709</EventRecordID>
    <Correlation />
    <Execution ProcessID="1604" ThreadID="2400" />
    <Channel>System</Channel>
    <Computer>WAR-NEW</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data Name="param1">Blue Iris Service</Data>
    <Data Name="param2">%%2</Data>
    <Binary>42006C007500650049007200690073000000</Binary>
  </EventData>
</Event>

Looks like Blue Iris suddenly decided to take a vacay without telling me. Now, I can't install it from installer executable, see screenshot below.


I can't repair the installation either, because it complains it can't find the .msi file.


So... what do I do? I fear uninstalling completely and installing from scratch will murder my config. Any ideas why Blue Iris is gone, how to prevent that from reoccurring, and how to reinstall it, while keeping all my configuration?

UPDATE: I had forgot to mention, yes, I do have a license, and the installed version was 5.8.2.2. Also, I took a risk and uninstalled and reinstalled from scratch, after copying the existing Blue iris 5 installation directory to a backup, and everything seems to be in order, which leaves me with just one question: What was the cause of Blue iris partially uninstalling itself?

[TimG]

Hi, do you have the anti virus exceptions set up ? See help file. It could be that or a virus. Do a search for the latest free McAfee Stinger and run that.

[IAmATeaf]

Did you have updates enabled in BI? Wondering if an auto update maybe went wrong?

[war4peace]

Did you have updates enabled in BI? Wondering if an auto update maybe went wrong?

That could have been the reason. It prompts me when updates are available, and to be honest I don't recall whether at that moment there was an update prompt or not. However, I kind of expected an error message or something if the update failed.

Hi, do you have the anti virus exceptions set up ? See help file. It could be that or a virus. Do a search for the latest free McAfee Stinger and run that.

I have ESET NOD32 with a license, and I checked its logs as well, nothing there.

[IAmATeaf]

My guess would be maybe an update had an issue?

When updates used to work on my system I’d get the BI unexpectedly stopped messages logged in the BI logs, always thought that that was a bit strange as it was the update that stopped Bi. I’ve also had one issue where the update seemed to hand trying to stop the BI service, so I manually stopped the service and the update continued.

[Pogo]

My guess would be maybe an update had an issue?

Latest stable release of course.

[war4peace]

It could have been a freak update glitch.
Which worries me a bit, because I am planning to move BI to a dedicated server in the future, and that server will work unattended for weeks, perhaps months.
Thinking about having an alert notify me when the service goes offline.

[TimG]

Can't you turn off automatic updates and do them when you have time to fix things ? BI5 will be fine without them, as they are adding things that you didn't even know you need

Always worth checking anti virus exceptions too, and those Stingers are excellent ADDITIONAL tools (if they still exist) on top of your existing AV solution. I usually use Malwarebytes on everything, but there is always a need for a check in a different direction just to be sure. I've done a lot of pc rebuilds for people who had ignored things for years, so have hit my head on that brick wall too many times.

[war4peace]

Automatic updates are turned off. BI notifies me through a pop-up.
What could have been happening is me typing furiously at the keyboard (to my shame, I never learned touch-typing, too late now, after three decades of typing) and the update pop-up plopped during that time, I confirmed while typing without seeing it, and it might have failed. Just assuming.

Does BI have update/installation logs?

[TimG]

If you save the Log to text file (It only creates one file a month, so I have it going to desktop) then you can see them. Here is one I did manually earlier:

0 03/12/2023 19:28:08.427 App Update saved to C:\Program Files\Blue Iris 5\Updates\update64_58104.exe
0 03/12/2023 19:28:08.548 App Running update C:\ProgramData\Blue Iris\temp\update.exe
0 03/12/2023 19:28:10.725 App Console: disconnected
10 03/12/2023 19:28:22.777 local_console [::]: Logout, 18:15
0 03/12/2023 19:28:22.778 App Stopped
0 03/12/2023 19:28:22.815 MQTT Disconnected OK
0 03/12/2023 19:28:27.772 App Nvidia video hardware detected
0 03/12/2023 19:28:27.772 App Nvidia video hardware detected
0 03/12/2023 19:28:27.776 App Started version 5.8.1.4
0 03/12/2023 19:28:27.776 App Updated from version 5.8.1.3

The standard Log amalgamates and counts issues so isn't much use for this.