There's a thread for this at http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=8265.
Some selected text from that thread:
I'm running the precompiled 1.8.3 patch 0 on Windows 2000 Server (with all the latest updates).
"pennmush.exe /run" executes fine, however "pennmush.exe /start" fails to start the service properly. Or, to be more accurate, the service starts and then stops. I've installed it, uninstalled it, had a look at the Registry to see that paths were correct, etc. The System Event Log has the following:
"The PennMUSH for Win32 service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 1 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 0 milliseconds: No action."
This is Event ID 7031, with the Service Control Manager listed as the source.
I'm a member of the Administrators group and no other. I haven't jacked with the default policy settings for Administrators. If I don't have the rights to do it, no one does. The service is configured to run under the Local System account.
I've tinkered with PennMUSH in the past, and it's reasonable to assume that I've had one or more previous versions installed on this box. Is it possible that there's a relic left over somewhere?
I've uninstalled it as a service, wiped out anything relevant in the registry, and installed again with no change. Could I have missed cleaning something?
And, btw, "anything relevant" ended up being...
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Current Control Set\Enum\Root\LEGACY_PENNMUSH
...which I had to use regedt32 to delete because of its security settings.
