.net - What causes error HRESULT: 0x80010105 (RPC_E_SERVERFAULT)?

Question

I created a ASP.NET web service that uses a 3rd party payment processing engine to authorize credit card transactions.

The web service is hosted on a separate application server and connects to the payment processing server via an ActiveX object (.ocx extension). Lately, it has been generating a HRESULT: 0x80010105 (RPC_E_SERVERFAULT) exception when I try to establish an connection to the application using an "IsAvaiable" check.

Does anyone recommend an good place to start for researching this issue?

(I know contacting the vendor would be the first option, but I want to have my "ducks in a row" before we contact technical support)

Answer 1

I've had the same error (RPC_E_SERVERFAULT) using ActiveX objects in web services. Whenever the ActiveX object crashed, IIS would throw this error, which would mask the reason that the object crashed (for us it was usually crashing while loading an invalid file that it needed to process and return values from).

Have you checked the system logs etc. to see if your ActiveX control has logged the actual error anywhere?

If you can't see anything obvious then I'd recommend contacting their technical support to figure out the best way to diagnose what the actual error is and if it's logging its errors anywhere.