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Aim 6.5 and Windows Vista, Server execution failed and Media Player Issues
Updated March 21, 2008
F.A.Q
The Story So Far
During a mandatory security update, Aim 6.5.4.16 was released onto the masses. After Windows Vista users updated to the newest version of Aim, a red X in the lower right corner showed the message, “Connection Status Unknown: Server Execution Failed.” Previously this error occurred after a Windows Update, but was later patched by Microsoft. Now, this error message is accompanied by the inability to play Mp3s in both Windows Media Player, and iTunes. Also other issues occurred with Steam Applications which run the games “Half Life 2″ and “Team Fortress 2″ leaving users unable to connect to the servers to download the game.
After a few months a new workarounds were found and supported by other members. Microsoft later released a patch on November 20th, 2007, but it may not fix this problem 100% of the time. When this particular bug became hugely popular, AOL and Microsoft teamed up to fix this problem. Unfortunately not much is known about the status of that fix. However recently AOL has supported the UAC method described below in the list of workarounds. Workarounds suggested by users are highlighted in the comments section in red.
Who Does this Bug Affect?
So far this bug has many different variables on who it affects. For the most part it has affected users who have installed Aim 6.5. In other situations, some users did not install AIM and received this error by installing Mozilla Firefox, or ViewPoint Media Player. The only connection seen so far is that only Windows Vista users are affected. Unfortunately it is not known as to why some Windows Vista users get this bug, although “allegedly” it may be linked to Vista’s UAC controls. We have not received much information on this as it has not been fixed within the Vista SP1 Patch.
How can I Help Find the Cure?
You can help find a cure for Server Execution Failed by posting in this thread. Please read the instructions prior to posting. Whether you have Aim 6.5 or not, you can still post in this thread.
How Can I Fix this problem?
There are four workarounds that will allow you to carry on normal activities but with some side effects. Choose the one thats best for you.
The XP Compatibility Wizard is the newest workaround for this issue. The main purpose is to prevent this bug in the first place by running Aim 6.5′s installer as an XP program.
The System Restore Method is the safest workaround for this issue. The main goal is to restore before Aim 6.5 was installed. If you cannot restore back, you will have to Reinstall Windows Vista using your CD.
The User Account Control Method is the most recommended workaround. By turning User Account Control on, you should in theory be immune to the server execution failed bugs when you install Aim 6.5. During Testing it was found that this method has worked in fixing the problem for example. However it does not work for everyone and so we recommend you try it out at least and post back your results
The Local Service Method is the most riskiest workaround. It will add the Local Service group to Administrators making you highly vulnerable to attacks if your not careful. You should follow this method as a last resort in case you need to backup files before you reinstall the Windows Vista operating System.
The Sound Drivers Method will restore sound and music issues for Windows Vista. You can find the steps to fix this problem by scrolling down to the comments section. It is highlighted in red.
What are the Symptoms for this bug?
1. Vista Displays a Red X saying that its not connected to a Network even though it is.
2. Connection may say “Connection status: unknown. Server execution failed.”
3. WMI Problems or is Corrupted
4. Windows Media Player won’t be able to play Mp3s
5. No sound can be heard from computer
6. Windows Security Center reports errors
7. Windows Security Center may not find your AntiVirus Program
8. No Network Activity is reported even though it exists
9. Windows Zero Configuration Problems
10. Steam Apps from Valve Software (i.e Half Life 2) will not download.
11. Windows Media Player cannot access the file. The file might be in use, you might not have access to the computer where the file is stored, or your proxy settings might not be correct.
12. iTunes stops working.
13. Xbox 360 Streaming Connection To PC does not work.
14. Creative Zen Vision M, or other MP3 players will not connect.
15. I must say this list is freakin long…
XP Compatibility Method
1. Download Aim 6.5 from Aim.com
2. Save the Installation File to your computer where you can retrieve it. DO NOT run this program
3. Click the Start Button, click Control Panel, then click Programs and finally click Use an Older Program with this version of Windows.
4. Click the Radio Button: I Want to Locate this Program Manually. Click Next.
5. Click Browse and locate the Aim 6.5′s installation file.
6. Select Windows XP (Service Pack 2), and click Next.
7. DO NOT Select any Display Options and Click Next.
The System Restore Method
1. Type restore in the Start Menu Search Box
2. Select System Restore
3. Choose a Restore Point before the Installation of Aim 6.5
4. Select a System Restore before Aim 6.5 was Installed
5. Confirm and Restart your Computer.
If you do not have a restore point or disabled system restore.
Reinstall your Windows Vista Operating System
User Account Control Method
The User Account Control suggestion was provided by easydoesit36. You can find his post here.
1. Uninstall Aim 6.5 and Viewpoint Media Player
1. Click Start Button
2. Click Control Panel
3. Click User Accounts & Family Settings
4. Click Turn User Account Control On. [Provide Admin Password]
5. Checkmark “Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer“
6. Click OK
7. Restart Computer
8. Install Aim 6.5
Voila everything turns back to normal!
Local Service Method
This is the Most Riskiest Workaround
Original Solution Modified, but Originally Provided by blueshot
1. Click Start Button
2. Right Click on “Computer”
3. Click Manage
4. Under System Tools Click Users & Groups **STOP**
Solution provided by Silver6477
If your computer does not show Users & Groups Read Below. You may skip this section if you have Users & Groups.
Boot the Computer in Safe Mode!
4a. Click the Start Button
4b. Type “CMD” without quotations
4c. Right click on CMD that shows up and click Run As Administrator
4d. Type the text below:
net localgroup Administrators NT Authority\Local Service /add
If the Code doesn’t work uninstall AIM 6.5 and reboot the Computer and try again
Solution provided by blueshot
5. Click Group
6. Click Administrators
7. Click Add to Group
8. Click Add
9. Click Advanced
10. Click Find Now
11. Double Click Local Service
12. Click OK
NTAuthority/Local Service should show up in the list
13. Click OK, and Close Computer Management and Reboot
You can also try to run CMD as Administrator and type in
net localgroup Administrators /add Local Service
Where Can I Go For Additional Help?
In the meantime you can discuss new methods to fix this problem by clicking on these links below.
73 Comments to “Aim 6.5 and Windows Vista, Server execution failed and Media Player Issues”
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Does anyone know if there has been a fix from the AOL end of things? Or even Vistas? I’m just really sick of the old crappy version of aim, since I couldn’t get 6.1 to download. I’m on like 5.8 or something. Anyway! Thanks.
Maybe this is fixed in Vista SP1?
Anyone try this on SP1 yet?
But Chico, that method you linked even as much as its linked already in the article, is the more risky workaround and you can be open to hacking and attacks on your end.
JME, AOL has officially recommended the User Account Control Method shown above in the post, until Microsoft fixes the problem.
Hm. ok thanks.
the problem may not be with aim. i got the issue by simply installing the stand alone viewpoint media manager software to use an application on a web site through my browser. I had previously turned UAC off. the only chat program i have installed is trillian which has always worked fine. i went to sound in the control panel first and fixed the sound problem with windows media player by clicking yes to a question that pops up. i am about to try aim with viewpoint with UAC now on to fix the problem. i’ll keep everyone updated. Is viewpoint media manager part of aol or another company on it’s own. we should all talk massive shit about that company on download.com and get them to give it a horrible review for their product.
most definitely a viewpoint media player combined with Vista user account control problem. thank god i did not have to do a system restore. I installed aim 6.5 with viewpoint media manager with UAC turned on. problem gone. Stupid viewpoint media player piece o’ shit. couldn’t play videos right in windows media player, screwed up my sound, couldn’t bluetooth activesync my smartphone, AT&T 3G network connection problems. All from one uneeded near useless piece of software. I hope i doesn’t affect anything else. I spent 2 hours on the phone with the AT&T people thinking it was a problem with my phone and laptop connection damn it. viewpoint media player burn in hell.
I’ll add that to the list.
I had the problem of media files not playing and the red “X” come up a few weeks ago, a short while after I had switched OFF Account Control . I was running Vista and AIM 5.9. I opened Control Panel < Hardware and Sound < Sound and stopped the error to get my files to play sound again. Tonight I turned Account Control back ON, deleted Viewpoint and AIM 5.9 from my programs, restarted my PC, then downloaded AIM 6.5.9.1…..and NO MORE RED “X”!!
It’s been a few hours, so hopefully I’ve fixed the annoying problem.
I may have found a fix.
>Download and save the AIM setup somewhere.
>Run this setup through the programs compatability wizard under start>control panel>programs>use and older program with this version of windows.
>when it asks what version of windows it worked with, select XP sevice pack 2.
>don’t select any color or screen optoins, excetera.
>once you finish the wizard should auto start the AIM installation.
>I’ve doen this and haven’t come across any problems yet, like the network/windows media problems. (which i’ve had before when i installed AIM the normal way.)
Please spread this around and let everyone know, I just posted here to get the word started, the rest is up to you all.
Ok sounds interesting, I’ll leave it up there until others have tested it out. UAC method still seems to be working fine though.
I’m one of the few people that the UAC method has NOT worked for. I tried it twice and all the symptoms re-appeared after the next reboot. So I’m still on 6.1.41.2 hoping I don’t get hacked.
I will try the compatibility install today and report back here.
Well, it looks like the compatibility install worked for me! I installed the latest 3-11-08 AIM Install using AnonHero’s compatibility method (also having UAC turned on) and AIM is now installed and Vista Ultimate on my Dell M4300 is running without any of the previous symptoms (Com event error, Network X Icon, Multimedia issues).
Thank you so much Hero!
System restore corrupted the operating system after I tried fixing my AIM issue with it… I really don’t want to have to turn UAC on… It’s annoying. I’m going to try AnonHero’s method with UAC off and see what happens.
After I finish reformatting my laptop that is…
I just want to stop and thank everybody that has posted here for doing so, I have been able to succesfully correct my issue after installing American offlines messenger service by following the UAC instructions above. I had a few other symtoms that occured after installing All outta luck:
In my device manager I had a ton of devices listed as non UPnP showing up. Also in the device manager my Drive SM_usb20 (flash drive) driver was unable to load. (Yet I could still access my drive normally) in addition to that it removed my Readyboost settings from my flash drive entirely.
Ty once again for all your help guys.
Hello we will be updating this entry for newer instructions about this event.
edgar’s answer fixed my winamp/itunes. does not fix the ‘red x’ server execution failed. but im not that concerned with it.
i fixed the sound on my vista when i encountered this problem…
1. go to control panel
2. switch to classic view
3. click on sound
4. windows asks if you would disable driver enhancements for this device CLICK YES and there u have it peeps!!
attempted every workaround i could find, the only one that gets rid of the red x is the least secure… but it does work.
when i type thing in aim the type is big but the font is the same size it’s always been. it happened all of a sudden and I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling it but, it hasn’t worked. do you know what i should do?
This problem exist if AIM crap is not installed.
Please help!
So I just had this happen to my computer and it’s restoring right now (obviously, I’m on a different one). Is there an AIM that’s safe to use without having to do anything special besides just downloading it? As much as I HATE 6.8, I may just download it and deal with it if it doesn’t come with these problems.
Follow the XP compatibility method and install it with Aim 6.8. Really the thing is to just install AIM with UAC on, then after its installed you can turn UAC off. Remember that everytime you upgrade AIM you have to turn UAC back on.
Hey Mike… I saw another website and ended up doing the “Local Service Method” without being aware that it was very risky… I still have the X over my network so it seems all for naught. I was trying to see if I could reverse the process and what the command would be that I would need to engage. Thanks in advance.
None of these solutions are correct. Do NOT add “NT AUTHORITY\LocalService” to the Administrators group. It appears to fix the problem but other stuff will still fail (for example, applying SP2).
After a coworker’s machine succumbed to this problem I googled for it but with no luck for a real solution. This is the best page I found and I appreciated the stark warning against adding LocalService to the Administrators group but unfortunately I didn’t see any real solutions besides uninstalling and reinstalling stuff. There had to be a better way and the starting point is that clearly it is some sort of permissions problem.
To discover the problem I ran procmon.exe (sysinternals) looking for Result ACCESS DENIED. This showed svchost.exe having trouble reading various things under HKCR\CLSID. So clearly it is some sort of permission problem but local services are supposed to be able to read HKCR without needing to be in the Administrators group so clearly something was wrong with the permissions in the registry.
A quick glance at HKCR keys seemed to indicate that it should have permissions but then I recalled that HKCR doesn’t really exist. Rather, HKCR is HKLM\Software\Classes with HKCU\Software\Classes overlaid on top of it. And HKCU is in turn simply a reference to HKEY_USERS\some-SID. Basically what this means is that when you run regedit, the view you get of HKCR (and HKCU) is specific to you. So looking at the permissions on HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT or HKEY_CURRENT_USER is going to give you bogus results: it always appears as though you, the user running regedit, are the owner of the keys which is not the reality of the underlying storage in HKLM\Software\Classes or HKCU\Software\Classes
Well none of the service accounts have a SOFTWARE\Classes key within their “user” registry hive so it has to be something with HKLM\Software\Classes. After examining my machine I found that permissions on Vista are defined at the HKLM\Software level and Classes inherits these. On his machine on the HKLM\Software key he had an extra entry for Everyone. I didn’t check to see what permissions it was granting or denying but I did use the Advanced permissions editor on both machines and saw that the only difference was that his machine had an entry for Everyone and mine did not. Everything else was the same, including which rights were granted to the remaining four SIDs.
I went ahead and deleted the entry for Everyone then hit OK. Warning: this will take a somewhat long time to process as the system has to recurse into all child registry keys of HKLM\Software and for any that are inheriting their permissions it has to fix them up. Do NOT cancel out under any circumstances! Let it finish applying the new ACL entries. It will appear to be hung while it does this.
How the entry for Everyone got there, I don’t know. But I do know that AIM had auto upgraded on him to version 7 which he didn’t like so he uninstalled it and installed an older version which is when this trouble began. He also had UAC disabled.
As a check, use the Effective Permissions tab and enter the Local Service name. This should show only certain permissions allowed (basically only those related to reading). If you had added Local Service to your Administrators group it will show full control; take Local Service out of Administrators (e.g. using computer management) and come back here and calculate effective permissions again (this will take effect immediately). It should show only a few things checked to allow reading. Now reboot and everything should be working just fine, including the Network List service.
For him, this fixed the problem and although we haven’t tried it yet I believe it will also fix the problem with installing SP2.