Antivirus is a necessary evil.  The problem with antivirus is they are as invasive as the malicious software they are designed to thwart; and occasionally damage your ability to compute.

C9 has always recommended Microsoft Security Essentials because it appears to be the least invasive of the lot in terms of interfering with the operation of c9.  But as of Christmas Eve, a number of users of c9 have reported problems with c9 database not working.

We believe the problem is connected to Microsoft Security Essentials and updates Microsoft made to MSSE around about this time.  We need to sit tight and wait until either Microsoft of the community behind PostgreSQL fix the issue.  In the mean time a couple of workarounds exist.

Workaround 1 - start the database manually

This solution is simple but must be done every time you reboot.

The problem appears that the database cannot automatically start when computer is rebooted; it needs to wait until MSSE finishes it's startup tasks first and the databases own startup process gives up waiting for this to happen.  After the server has started and you have logged into the server and things appear to be stable and idle you can try manually starting the database.  There are a few ways to do this. Here are two:

Method 1

Open Computer/My Computer and navigate to local disk C: and then the following folders:

• c9db
• 8.4
• c9install

Double click on entry that says start ( or start.vbs).  You will see following:

Upon clicking, keep clicking the buttons. Sequence should be something like this:

Method 2

Right click on the link below and click "Save Link As..." (or similar) and save it to your desktop.  Unzip it.  Now click on new item on your desktop.  Screen with flash black.   Database should be running.

http://c8software.com.au/download/pg_start.zip

 

Workaround 2 - add an exception into Microsoft Security Essentials

This workaround is harder but permanent so only needs to be done once.

Click/Right click on Microsoft security essentials in bottom right in system tray and click on Open

Click Settings, then click Excluded Processes, then click Browse.

Now navigate to the following file:

• Local disk C:
• c9db
• 8.4
• bin
• pg_ctl.exe

Click OK

Then click Add to copy the selected file to the exception list.

Now click on save changes to apply the exception. From now on system should boot and start the database automatically.