Win XP's Universal Plug and Play Device Host service starts and thenstops immediately

[YKhan]

It's the wierdest thing, I noticed today that my UPNPhost service is
no
longer working on two of my XP machines. I noticed it on my desktop
first, so I went to my laptop to compare, and found out that it's not
working there either! I've checked through a number of webpages and
none
of them have had the solution for me yet.

So I'll go through what I've already done.

(1) The upnphost service was not working, so I tried to re-enable it
in
the services manager. I made sure that it's dependent services were
also
running (and set to automatic), SSDP and HTTP. The following message
popped-up after the attempted startup:

"The Universal Plug and Play Device Host service on local computer
started and then stopped. Some services stop automatically if they
have
no work to do, for example, the Performance Logs and Alerts service."

(2) I then went to see if the XP firewall was blocking the UPnP
Framework. It wasn't, it's listed within its exceptions list.

(3) Another article suggested that the problem might lie in the
registry, it suggested that I go into regedit and make sure that the
"Local Service" user account have full control permissions over the
following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\UPnP Device Host

The permissions were already set properly. This was suggested in the
following article:
http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...&tid=746860bc-f2fc-4777-a08e-9494d8d53014&p=1

(4) I then went and tried to uninstall and reinstall the UPNP services
in Add/Remove Programs. This made no difference.

(5) I got stumped, and came here for help.

Yousuf Khan

 

[David B.]

As the description said, it will stop if it's not needed, is there some
reason why you think you need to have it running constantly?

 

[Jack-MVP]

Hi
You probably have No UPnP Device on your Network, so it stops.
Jack (MS, MVP-Networking)

 

[YKhan]

As the description said, it will stop if it's not needed, is there some
reason why you think you need to have it running constantly?

Well, because it used to run constantly, and recently I started having
some random port-forwarding problems on some applications that use
UPNP. I have a UPNP diagnostic program called UPNPTest which I use to
troubleshoot UPNP problems, and it mentioned that this service was not
running.

So you are saying that this service isn't needed by applications that
use UPNP? What sort of things are considered UPNP devices? Would
routers be such?

Yousuf Khan

 

[Jack-MVP]

Hi
Yeah, many Routers have UPnP capacity. Usually the Default is Off (it is
considered a Risk to leave it On).
If you need the UPnP, log to the Router and switch it On.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Plug_and_Play
Jack (MS, MVP-Networking)

As the description said, it will stop if it's not needed, is there some
reason why you think you need to have it running constantly?

Well, because it used to run constantly, and recently I started having
some random port-forwarding problems on some applications that use
UPNP. I have a UPNP diagnostic program called UPNPTest which I use to
troubleshoot UPNP problems, and it mentioned that this service was not
running.

So you are saying that this service isn't needed by applications that
use UPNP? What sort of things are considered UPNP devices? Would
routers be such?

Yousuf Khan

 

[daytripper]

Well, because it used to run constantly, and recently I started having
some random port-forwarding problems on some applications that use
UPNP. I have a UPNP diagnostic program called UPNPTest which I use to
troubleshoot UPNP problems, and it mentioned that this service was not
running.

So you are saying that this service isn't needed by applications that
use UPNP? What sort of things are considered UPNP devices? Would
routers be such?

Yousuf Khan

Routers that support uPnP would be such, if - as has been said - that function
is enabled at the router.

fwiw, I don't allow uPnP at my router for security reasons, preferring to
manually configure any required port-forwarding, and the uPnP service on each
of the many XP systems on the lan eventually stop after boot-up, which would
confirm what Jack has said.

Perhaps you've cooked yet another network appliance? ;-)

/daytripper

 

[YKhan]

Routers that support uPnP would be such, if - as has been said - that function
is enabled at the router.

fwiw, I don't allow uPnP at my router for security reasons, preferring to
manually configure any required port-forwarding, and the uPnP service on each
of the many XP systems on the lan eventually stop after boot-up, which would
confirm what Jack has said.

Perhaps you've cooked yet another network appliance? ;-)

Actually, in this case, about a month or two back, I removed the
router from my network completely after getting my gigabit switch. I
replaced the router instead with the built-in routing functions of my
Speedstream DSL modem. I did this to reduce the complexity of the
network: less devices in the chain gives you less devices that screw
up the chain. Also, the Speedstream seems to be a much more reliable
device than a D-link router. I used to have to do heat-related reboots
for the D-link router nearly every month, whereas the Speedstream
could usually go 3 or 4 months continuously.

The Speedstream is extremely non-configurable as a router though, with
almost no features that you can setup, other than whether it will act
as a router or just as a bridge to an external router. There isn't any
way of specifying manual ports-forwarding. However, it did seem to
support UPNP, because the only way to forward any ports at all was
through UPNP.

Yousuf Khan