powershell Start-Process exit code -1073741502 when used with Credential from a windows service environment

Question

I'm running into a strange behavior with a powershell Start-Process call.

Here is the call:

$process = start-process `
    "C:\somepath\MyBinary.exe" `
    -PassThru `
    -Credential $defaultCredential `
    -Wait `
    -WorkingDirectory  "C:\somepath" `
    -LoadUserProfile
if ($process.ExitCode -ne 0)
{
#do something
}

This call always return with the exit code -1073741502.
After a quick search, this exit code seems related to a generic error when the program could not load its required dll (aka. STATUS_DLL_INIT_FAILED).

When I run it without -Credential $credential the program runs correctly.

In order to isolate the problem, I manually launched some.exe in a prompt with my target credential and it runs smoothly.

So the problem only seems to come from the way the start-process cmdlet effectively launch the process.

I found some potential solutions for this problem I tried to apply with no luck : link and link.

Would you have any idea of what's going on here ?

Edit 1:
I run a proc mon for monitoring program activities when launched directly or via the powershell script. The problem seems to occur when loading kernelbase.dll.

Local procmon dump (working):

9:06:35.3837439 AM  MyBinary.exe    2620    Load Image  C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernelbase.dll  SUCCESS Image Base: 0x76270000, Image Size: 0x47000
9:06:35.4317417 AM  MyBinary.exe    2620    RegOpenKey  HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\Sorting\Versions  REPARSE Desired Access: Read
9:06:35.4317751 AM  MyBinary.exe    2620    RegOpenKey  HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\Sorting\Versions  SUCCESS Desired Access: Read
9:06:35.4318016 AM  MyBinary.exe    2620    RegSetInfoKey   HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\Sorting\Versions  SUCCESS KeySetInformationClass: KeySetHandleTagsInformation, Length: 0
9:06:35.4318152 AM  MyBinary.exe    2620    RegQueryValue   HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Nls\Sorting\Versions\(Default)    SUCCESS Type: REG_SZ, Length: 36, Data: 00060101.00060101
...

Powershell procmon (failing, see thread exit, and process exit code -1073741502):

9:35:07.9455191 AM  MyBinary.exe    2276    Load Image  C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernelbase.dll  SUCCESS Image Base: 0x76270000, Image Size: 0x47000
9:35:07.9537146 AM  MyBinary.exe    2276    Thread Exit     SUCCESS Thread ID: 5112, User Time: 0.0000000, Kernel Time: 0.0000000
9:35:07.9537386 AM  MyBinary.exe    2276    QueryNameInformationFile    C:\Windows\System32\apisetschema.dll    SUCCESS Name: \Windows\System32\apisetschema.dll
9:35:07.9537686 AM  MyBinary.exe    2276    QueryNameInformationFile    C:\somepath\MyBinary\MyBinary.exe   SUCCESS Name: \somepath\MyBinary\MyBinary.exe
9:35:07.9537914 AM  MyBinary.exe    2276    QueryNameInformationFile    C:\Windows\System32\wow64cpu.dll    SUCCESS Name: \Windows\System32\wow64cpu.dll
9:35:07.9538134 AM  MyBinary.exe    2276    QueryNameInformationFile    C:\Windows\System32\wow64win.dll    SUCCESS Name: \Windows\System32\wow64win.dll
9:35:07.9538349 AM  MyBinary.exe    2276    QueryNameInformationFile    C:\Windows\System32\wow64.dll   SUCCESS Name: \Windows\System32\wow64.dll
9:35:07.9538579 AM  MyBinary.exe    2276    QueryNameInformationFile    C:\Windows\System32\ntdll.dll   SUCCESS Name: \Windows\System32\ntdll.dll
9:35:07.9538796 AM  MyBinary.exe    2276    QueryNameInformationFile    C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll   SUCCESS Name: \Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll
9:35:07.9539425 AM  MyBinary.exe    2276    Process Exit        SUCCESS Exit Status: -1073741502, User Time: 0.0000000 seconds, Kernel Time: 0.0000000 seconds, Private Bytes: 339,968, Peak Private Bytes: 401,408, Working Set: 1,523,712, Peak Working Set: 1,826,816

Edit 2:
I should mention the powershell script is run from a service (it's a bamboo service agent). And i just found this thread saying:

Process.Start internally calls CreateProcessWithLogonW(CPLW) when credentials are specified. CreateProcessWithLogonW cannot be called from a Windows Service Environment (such as an IIS WCF service). It can only be called from an Interactive Process (an application launched by a user who logged on via CTRL-ALT-DELETE).

My guess is that powershell start-process call is making uses of CreateProcessWithLogonW...

Edit 3:
My service is run with a custom user (because I cannot impersonate from System), so as read link. I tested ensuring the "Allow service to interact with desktop" was enabled. Because it's only available for non custom accounts I set it up by hand on registry by altering HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\%myservice% Type key (as described here and here).

Answer 1

start-process is an 'alias' for System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(), so yes, it does make use of CreateProcessWithLogonW(). As noted, this method can't be called from a service process, it can only be called from an 'interactive' process. The caveat to that "only" is the one you've discovered - that when you aren't changing credentials, it can at least get the process started. (This may actually even be a bug - a Microsoft Support engineer I spoke with about this issue was "surprised" it worked at all.)

The only (supported) way to launch another process from inside a service process is to use the native Win32 API method CreateProcessAsUser(). An example of how to do this is C#.NET can be found in the answer to the question mentioned in edit #2.

A Windows process must launched as part of a user session. If the launching process is running as part of an interactive session - the kind where you logged in using CTRL+ALT+DELETE and have a desktop open - then you can use CreateProcessWithLogonW(), which will use your current user session automatically. If the launching process is a service, or "batch" process (as Scheduled Tasks are), then the launching process must either create a new user session (or identify an existing one) to launch the new process in (which is what the code in the afore-mentioned answer does.)