Windows Event Log Access Denied on IFP Startup

Scenario

When starting IFP, you receive an error message with the text "Cannot open log for source 'IFP'. You may not have write access.".

Cause

This is due to the following series of events:

• The user does not have access to write to the Windows Application Event Log (this is very unusual, as most applications need to write to the Event Log).
• This only appears to be a problem in Citrix installations of IFP, as domain users are added to the Guests group, which is not allowed access to the Event Log.
• On startup, IFP is checking for software updates, by contacting a web service at ajbsystems.net. If this fails (e.g. there is no internet connection), IFP will attempt to log the issue in the Event Log.
• However, if the user does not have access to the Event Log, a message will be displayed notifying them of this.

Note that IFP will only write to the Event Log if something has gone wrong. It is in these cases that we need to know as much information as possible.

Solution

Windows Administrator Access is required for this solution.

To solve this issue, you will need to stop the Event Log from being used to log IFP events. To do this, please open the following file in Notepad. It would be a good idea to take a backup copy of this file first!

C:\Program Files (x86)\AJB Systems\IFP\ifp.exe.config

• Please refer to the attached screenshot and remove the 2 lines indicated. Do not edit or remove anything else!
• Save the file, then relaunch IFP and log in.

Note that IFP will still log any errors to a file-based log.