Duke

Success! Sometimes it helps to "sleep on" a question. The question: If "the system" shouldn't be telling the Adminstrator "Access is denied," what might be doing it? Answer: the firewall! I have a ZoneAlarm software firewall. Shutting it down removed the problem. MrX, your PsKill now does the job as you expected it to. I can shut down Apache, and also get permission from Windows to remove the Jump drive. This probably means the original PsKill would also work. Conclusion: with your assistance, the problem has been solved! Thanks! Other answers to questions now of academic interest: I got "apache -k stop" from the Apache website. I am a retired scientific programmer who knows just enough about systems to get myself into trouble. I have been using phpBB2 for about 5 years as a "content management" system, and I am looking for something more flexible. MediaWiki looked like a plausible candidate, and making it as portable as a jump drive seemed very enticing. Now, thanks to your help, I will be able to test that hypothesis. Thanks again! Duke

Thanks for the suggestion MrX! I tried your changes. It turns out that the Server_Start batch file also uses pskill, and expects a return code if Apache is not running. The result was that the script complained and quit. Next, I started Apache manually and tried your pskill program to stop it. Your program returned a message in the DOS window 'Access is denied.' just like the Task Manager. Next, I renamed your tool pskill2.exe, used the original pskill in the Start script, and your tool in the Stop script. It hung the system. Finally, I tried using your tool manually to kill the Apache task. It started in the DOS window and hung, but politely. I could kill pskill with Ctrl-C. I could not, however, get it to kill Apache. Incidentally, I am running all these tests in an account with Administrator privileges. Duke

I am attempting to set up a "Wiki on a Stick" following the advice at: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_on_a_stick The installation went remarkably smoothly, with Uniform Server 3.3 and MediaWiki 1.6.6 on Windows 2000 SP3. I've installed MediaWiki before on a hard drive, so everything appeared successful, and the functional Wiki appears fully operational. Too good to be true, right? Right. The problem came when I tried to shut it down. The "Stop.bat" produces a "." in one line, which seems to indicate a return code. Using the Uniform Server control panel, appears to work: when I confirm that I want to shut down Apache, I get an hourglass in my browser, presumably because Apache is no longer responding. However, in either case, when I try to "stop" the USB drive, Windows tells me I'm not allowed to. Bringing up the Task Manager, I find that Apache is still running. When I try to shut it down using the Task Manager, I'm told "Access denied!" If I open a command window, cd to ...\Apache2\bin and execute "apache -k stop" I get the message "[error](OS 2)The system cannot find the file specified.: No installed service named "Apache". I followed the Wiki_on_a_stick advice under "No other Apache.exe" to rename Apache to Apache2, to see if that would help, but it didn't. Typically, after I try to shut it down, about 3 minutes later the monitor goes black, the keyboard and mouse are unresponsive, and only a power-off gets the computer's attention. The "access.log" looks like this: 127.0.0.1 - - [23/Jun/2006:12:46:31 -0700] "GET /apanel/index.php HTTP/1.1" 200 690 "http://localhost/apanel/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6" 127.0.0.1 - - [23/Jun/2006:12:46:34 -0700] "GET /wi/index.php/Main_Page HTTP/1.1" 200 2448 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6" ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ The preceding text was copied and pasted from the access file. The "y"s go on for many lines. I'm guessing that your "pskill" program is trying to send a message, and filling up some kind of buffer. I have not found any posts similar to this. Can you tell me how to stop Apache without using "pskill?" Any other ideas? Thanks! Duke