GPA 3.0: GT_GetGlobalInjectionState failed

[Tom_Hudson]

When I try to start an app explicitly from the Monitor, I get a "GT_GetGlobalInjectionState failed" error message. When I attempt to turn on Enable Instrumentation, I seem to be getting that same error message in the Monitor tooltip. There doesn't seem to be any documentation of that error in the help file or the knowledge base (or anywhere else in Google).

DEP is reported as enabled, and that may be connected to the problem. However, the instructions provided via the Help file for turning off DEP don'tseem tomatch what I see in the Windows7 UI, which gives me the options:
* Turn on DEP for essential Windows programs and services only
* Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select
Even with the first option selected, GPA Monitor reports that DEP is enabled; there does not seem to be an option on my machine to turn off DEP completely.

I enjoyed using GPA at my last job and was excited by the possibility of applying it to my current project, so this is frustrating, and any help is appreciated. Reading the tail end of System Inspector's output ("No support for GPA instrumentation"), I have to wonder if the newer versions of GPA have become less compatible with non-Intel development platforms? It was highly useful even onanother company'sGPU in mid-late 2009.

Tom

System Inspector says
--------------------------

Environment:

(Intel GPA System Inspector)

Windows 7, 64-bit DEP enabled

Num Processors: 4

Memory: 5886MB

Driver 0:

Device: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M

Provider: NVIDIA

Date: 8-6-2009

Version: 8.15.11.8664

VendorId: 10de

ProductId: 618

Stepping: a2

No support for GPA Instrumentation

Driver 1:

Device: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M

Provider: NVIDIA

Date: 8-6-2009

Version: 8.15.11.8664

VendorId: 10de

ProductId: 618

Stepping: a2

No support for GPA Instrumentation

Driver 2:

Device: NVIDIA GeForce 9400

Provider: NVIDIA

Date: 8-6-2009

Version: 8.15.11.8664

VendorId: 10de

ProductId: 862

Stepping: b1

No support for GPA Instrumentation

GPA install directory: C:\\Program Files\\Intel\\GPA v3.0\\

GPA version: 3.0.111099

[Neal_Pierman]

Hello,

Thanks for using Intel GPA... I'll try to help you with this issue.

First, please try exiting the Intel GPA Monitor program, reboot, restart Intel GPA Monitor, and see if this helps resolve the issue. Note that it shouldn't matter which option of the Intel GPA Monitor you use to startup the application.

Secondly, are you running this as an Admin account? If not, could you try running with an Admin account and let me know if there is any difference in what you are seeing?

Next, could you let me know the values of the following registry keys (via regedit or some other application):

• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\AppInit_DLLs
• HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\AppInit_DLLs

With the above information I should hopefully be able to get a better idea as to why you are seeing this issue.

Regards,

Neal

ps-> btw, I had already reported back to the development team that you cannot disable DEP on certain opsys platforms, and I'm awaiting their response

[Tom_Hudson]

Thanks, Neal.

Rebooting doesn't seem to change anything. (FWIW, GPA Monitor has apparently set itself as a startup program, and is already running after reboot even if I explicitly exit it beforehand.)

According to regedit, neither of those registry keys exist on my machine. Should they have been set up by the installer? What are the correct values?

Unfortunately, my IT is being unclear about the admin account; I should be running with Local Admin priviliges, and any way won't be able to get higher access to a work machine.

Tom

[Neal_Pierman]

Hello Tom,

Thanks for the info on rebooting -- sometimes Intel GPA Monitor doesn't automatically start so I wanted to be sure all came up ok.

It sounds like you believe that you're running with admin priv's -- please goto Control Panel / User Accounts to verify (and at my request the next version of Intel GPA will include the account status in gpa-system-inspector).

As to the regedit results, Intel GPA is trying to access these values, and since these values do not exist Intel GPA can't proceed and you get the error message that you've mentioned. One thing as well -- is your game/app a 32-bit or 64-bit app?

Thanks!

Neal

ps-> in parallel I'm checking with others here to see under what conditions these values would not be set

[Neal_Pierman]

Hello,

I've been doing a bit more checking on this, and I'm wondering whether you are running any anti-virus software, as it is possible that this software is preventing Intel GPA from being to use these registry keys. So please check and let me know what you find out...

Also, can you let me know whether you have a registry entry named "LoadAppInit_DLLs"?

Thanks!

Neal

[Neal_Pierman]

Yet more digging into this...

One more thing to do is to open the event viewer and look in the system logfile. Then exit from Intel GPA Monitor and then try to restart it, and see whether an entry in the logfile is created when you try to restart Intel GPA Monitor -- on Microsoft Vista I get a warning message from Windows Defender that I've attempted to modify the values of these registry values.

Also, you should be able to check your anti-virus s/w to see if it has blocked Intel GPA Monitor's attempt to access these values.

Regards,

Neal

[Tom_Hudson]

Lots of ideas, great.

I've confirmed I am running with Administrator priviliges.
The App I want to evaluate is 32b.
We use AVG Anti-Virus, and the event log doesn't have anything today or yesterday but startup/shutdown/update messages.
Registry search doesn't find any instances of LoadAppInit_DLLs.
There don't appear to be any relevant entries in Event Viewer > Windows > System. There are a couple of Audit Failures in Event Viewer > Windows > Security, but they aren't tied to GPA Monitor.

[Neal_Pierman]

Hello,

What version of AVG are you using? Can you disable and try re-running, as I suspect that AVG is keeping Intel GPA Monitor from being able to initialize itself properly (as we've had others report issues with GPA conflicts with AVG).

Also, do you know whether AVG has a log of things it has done? If so, please see whether there is any mention of it blocking Intel GPA's access to these registry values.

Thanks for helping isolate the problem!

Regards,

Neal

[numerator747]

I am getting this same error and I am not using AVG. I disabled my virus protection (McAfee) and it still did not work.

[Neal_Pierman]

Hello,

Can both of you please try to see whether you can get Intel GPA Monitor to work by using the "Run Target Application..." option for connecting to a specific application/game? I've had another person be able to do this successfully even though they couldn't "Enable Instrumentation".

Thanks!

Neal

[Stace]

I too had this same issue and did not have either of the registry entries on my system.

However after manually adding the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\Windows\\AppInit_DLLs" as an empty string the monitor applications runs just fine.

Thanks Neal for pointing me in the right direction.

I do not know the purpose of this key or how it is supposed to get created but GPA is the first profiling application I have run that has required its existance.


Cheers
Stace


My setup is Windows XP SP3 with McAfee antivirus.

[Neal_Pierman]

I too had this same issue and did not have either of the registry entries on my system. My setup is Windows XP SP3 with McAfee antivirus.

However after manually adding the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\Windows NT\\CurrentVersion\\Windows\\AppInit_DLLs" as an empty string the monitor applications runs just fine.

I do not know the purpose of this key or how it is supposed to get created but GPA is the first profiling application I have run that has required its existance.

Hello,

I'm glad to hear that Intel GPA is now working for you!

A couple of questions:

• Are you running the corporate or home version of McAfee, and which specific version are you running?
• Had you ever installed a version of AVG on your system?
• Did "Run target application..." work prior to the change that you made to the registry?
• Did you ever try disabling McAfee, and if so did this have an effect on whether you could run or not?
• With the change you made to the registry, are both "Enable Instrumentation" and "Run target application..." now working as expected?

So thanks in advance for your responses to these questions, since your answers will help the Intel GPA team identify and resolve the issue.

Also, you mentioned "GPA is the first profiling application I have run that has required its existence". These registry keys are what Intel GPA uses for "Enable Instrumentation" to automatically attach to processes (so that you don't have to start the game from within the Intel GPA tools). But this method can also be used by computer viruses to infect your system, so some anti-virus software blocks our attempt to set these values. By the way, others have unsuccessfully attempted to manually insert these registry keys when using other anti-virus packages (AVG in particular), so it's good info to know that you can do this with McAfee.

Thanks again for your feedback and for using Intel GPA as part of your workflow.

Regards,

Neal

[Stace]

A couple of questions:
Are you running the corporate or home version of McAfee, and which specific version are you running? McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.7.0i

Had you ever installed a version of AVG on your system? Never.

Did "Run target application..." work prior to the change that you made to the registry? The dialog box will pop up requesting the application to launch, but on clicking OK I just receive the
GT_GetGlobalInjectionState failed message.

Did you ever try disabling McAfee, and if so did this have an effect on whether you could run or not? I do not have the privileges to control McAfee but can kill the services. Doing so and terminating many other background process made no difference.

With the change you made to the registry, are both "Enable Instrumentation" and "Run target application..." now working as expected? "Enable Instrumentation" is not an option as this is a WinXP system but "Run target application..." works fine.

I've used ProcMon to monitor the registry access to this key and at no point during the install is an attempt to create the key made. There several attempts to query which all fail. Creating my own .reg file to set this key succeeds just fine.

Just installed on a similar machine and the same issue occurs.

Well not much to go on there but hope it helps.

Cheers
Stace

[Neal_Pierman]

Hello,

It ends up that your response has in fact been very helpful, and the dev team is working on this issue based upon your feedback. This also confirmed for us that the issue is not isolated to AVG, and may include users of McAfee and/or other anti-virus sofware as well.

I'll post more information on this thread as soon as I have an estimated time for a workaround and/or fix being available.

Thanks again for your help with this!

Regards,

Neal

[Neal_Pierman]

Hello,

The Intel GPA team has just released a new update to the product, build 117271, that addresses some of the issues highlighted in this thread. Browse over to the Intel GPA Home Page, and click on the link that says "register to download".

In particular, though the anti-virus software still conflicts with Intel GPA's "Enable Instrumentation" option, we've at least fixed the "Run Target Application..." option so that this will now work for all users independent of which anti-virus software you have installed. Also, if there is a conflict, we'll now print out a more helpful error message which tells you how to workaround the problem.

Please let us know of any additional issues, questions, or comments you have regarding Intel GPA.

Regards,

Neal

[Neal_Pierman]

Also, as a previous posting has noted, if you manually insert the previously-mentioned registry keys the "Enable Instrumentation" option should work as well.

(It ends up that these keys are supposed to always be around in a "normal" installation of the operating system, but some anti-virus software completely removes these keys when you install and/or run the anti-virus software).

Neal