What causes error HRESULT: 0x80010105 (RPC_E_SERVERFAULT)?

Question

I created a ASP.NET web service that uses a 3rd party payment processing engine to authorize credit card transactions.

The web service is hosted on a separate application server and connects to the payment processing server via an ActiveX object (.ocx extension). Lately, it has been generating a HRESULT: 0x80010105 (RPC_E_SERVERFAULT) exception when I try to establish an connection to the application using an "IsAvaiable" check.

Does anyone recommend an good place to start for researching this issue?

(I know contacting the vendor would be the first option, but I want to have my "ducks in a row" before we contact technical support)

Answer 1

I've had the same error (RPC_E_SERVERFAULT) using ActiveX objects in web services. Whenever the ActiveX object crashed, IIS would throw this error, which would mask the reason that the object crashed (for us it was usually crashing while loading an invalid file that it needed to process and return values from).

Have you checked the system logs etc. to see if your ActiveX control has logged the actual error anywhere?

If you can't see anything obvious then I'd recommend contacting their technical support to figure out the best way to diagnose what the actual error is and if it's logging its errors anywhere.

Answer 2

Michael, your third party Activex control is probably not managing memory properly. My guess is it is overwriting a part of a memory when it shouldn't be. Check with your third party provider to see if they have a fix for it.

Answer 3

I know this is stack overflow and there should be a programming answer here, but you mention no updates or software changes to the failing machine. If there were no software changes it is most likely a hardware issue. RAM Fails, CPUs fail, hardware fails. If you can take the system offline and test the hardware you will probably find that a disk or a memory module is failing (NIC maybe too). It is likely the first step the vendor would have you do but if you do it yourself you can do it on your terms and might safe yourself the service charge for a few hours of their time.