Dear all,

I am currently running an experiment on the web. One of my participants complained that she has encountered an error message when trying to start the program (see attached screenshot): "dfsvc.exe does not work anymore". I have no idea what this means, and whether this error stands in connection with the Inquisit software (probably not). Anyway, I am afraid that this participant will blame me for this problem. Has anyone encountered this problem before? And if yes, what does it mean? Is there a way to fix it? 

I am grateful for any hint.

Thanks in advance,

Thomas

I don't have any solution for you, but I do have a hint. AFAIK, 'dfsvc.exe' is related to the ClickOnce version of the Inquisit web launcher. My best guess is that its installation failed and left some corrupted files behind. You might try to fully remove and reinstall the plugin or you might try using a different version of the plugin (i.e. ActiveX or Java) and see if that works.

Best wishes from a fellow user,

~Dave

Thanks a lot!

Good to hear you're up and running again! So, what exactly did you do to resolve the issue? Just asking in case others run into similar problems in the future...

Thanks,

~Dave

That error message was definitely about the ClickOnce service crashing, most likely due to a corrup application cache. This is a Microsoft issue, but unfortunately, it affects Inquisit which depends on ClickOnce.

As Dave mentioned, you can instruct the participant to try one of the other links for the ActiveX, Java WebStart, or Mozilla Plugin versions, in which case ClickOnce is not used.

We also have a utility program that will clean out the ClickOnce cache that you can point your participants to if they see this problem. The utility can be downloaded here:

http://www.millisecond.com/download/win/iqclean3.exe

Regards,
Sean