Cannot start service after Elasticsearch upgrade from 1.4.1 to 1.4.4

Question

I have installed Elasticsearch successfully on Windows 7 version x64, using ELS 1.4.1. After upgrading to Kibana 4 RTM, it required ELS 1.4.4. To carry out the upgrade, I performed the following steps: - Downloaded ELS 1.4.4 - Stopped and removed the ELS 1.4.1 service - Renamed the current install directory to elasticsearch_bak - Extracted the 1.4.4 zip to the elasticsearch directory - Compared the /config/elasticsearch.yml and config/logging.yml and applied the changes (which contains the following additional settings at the bottom) ``` # Helps Chrome work properly http.cors.allow-origin: "/.*/" http.cors.enabled: true ``` Upon starting the service, it stops within a few seconds. The logs are as follows: Java Version (Note this is for development purposes) ``` java version "1.8.0_31" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_31-b13) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 25.31-b07, mixed mode, sharing) ``` Event Log ``` The Elasticsearch 1.4.4 (elasticsearch) service terminated with se…

Accepted Answer

I had the exact same issue and here is how I've fixed it.

Here is my setup

I am using `Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise` - 64-bit version. Everything worked fine with Java (JRE) version `1.8.0_25`. Elastic search was installed as Windows Service.

Exactly before the issue I updated Java to version `1.8.0_31` and restarted the machine.

Here is the history of steps I took

Firstly after restarting the machine I've noticed that ElasticSearch service was stopped. After trying to start it it stopped again.

Here is what I get in my Events Log for the issue:

The Elasticsearch 1.4.1 (elasticsearch-service-x64) service terminated with service-specific error Incorrect function..

Here is what I had in my `elasticsearch-service-x64.2015-02-27.log`:

```
[2015-02-27 14:38:29] [info]  [ 4948] Commons Daemon procrun (1.0.15.0 64-bit) started
[2015-02-27 14:38:29] [info]  [ 4948] Running 'elasticsearch-service-x64' Service...
[2015-02-27 14:38:29] [info]  [ 3048] Starting service...
[2015-02-27 14:38:29] [error] [ 3048] Failed creating java C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_25\bin\server\jvm.dll
[2015-02-27 14:38:29] [error] [ 3048] The system cannot find the path specified.
[2015-02-27 14:38:29] [error] [ 3048] ServiceStart returned 1
[2015-02-27 14:38:29] [error] [ 3048] The system cannot find the path specified.
[2015-02-27 14:38:29] [info]  [ 4948] Run service finished.
[2015-02-27 14:38:29] [info]  [ 4948] Commons Daemon procrun finished
```

Then I've changed the value of `JAVA_HOME` system variable to `C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_31`

The issue then was:

```
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.elasticsearch.Version
        at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.buildErrorMessage(Bootstrap.java:254)
        at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:238)
        at org.elasticsearch.bootstrap.Elasticsearch.main(Elasticsearch.java:32)
```

What fixed the problem

I've completely deleted folders `bin`, `config`, `lib` and `plugins` from the ElasticSearch folder.

Be sure to not to delete `data` directory because there are located your indexes!

- Unzipped the same folders (`bin`, `config` and `lib`) from `elasticsearch-1.4.4.zip`.

- Ran `SC DELETE elasticsearch-service-x64` as administrator in Command Prompt (to delete the installed service)

Ran `F:\Services\elasticsearch\bin>service.bat install`

```
Installing service      :  "elasticsearch-service-x64"
Using JAVA_HOME (64-bit):  "C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_31"
The service 'elasticsearch-service-x64' has been installed.
```

Started the service

And then everything started to work correctly.

Cannot start service after Elasticsearch upgrade from 1.4.1 to 1.4.4

Solution

Problem