FME Flow Services Cannot Start After Upgrade

Consideration

You have uninstalled a previous version of FME Flow (previously FME Server) and installed a new release onto the same system. When you attempt to run FME Flow, the services will not start. Attempting to start the FME Flow Core service manually within Windows Services produces the following error message:

Why This Happens

Different actions can cause this issue. Two of the common ones are:

1. The FME Database Service failed to install properly
2. If you uninstall an older version of FME Flow and then fail to reboot the system before completing the updated installation. In this case, Windows marks the services for deletion even though they have been updated to a newer version.

For more information on uninstalling FME Flow, see here.

How to Resolve This

To correct this issue, reboot the system and reinstall FME Flow using an account with full administrative privileges. You should now be able to run the services successfully. For a full guide to upgrading FME Flow, see here.