LoadLibrary fails sometimes when starting as service

Question

We have a 64bit application running as service on Windows 7 64bit. When we start a service manually, it works fine everytime. When the service is started automatically with system startup, sometimes (like 1 in 10) it fails. Problem is with LoadLibrary function which is in fact the first thing it does. It is a load of our DLL where the most of the code is. I can't reproduce it on my computers, so I am just sending special testing binaries to colleague abroad. I added text outputs to file using unbuffered write operation so I can see exactly where it disappears. There is no crash dump, there is no exception, there is no NULL retrived, it just exits somewhere in LoadLibrary and service is not running after system startup. Our library does not have DllMain, but if I add it, it does not get there (in fail case). I tried delay loading of dependent system libraries, no success. It seems like sometimes something is not yet started in Windows and so the initialization fails, I am not sure. But adding sleep before LoadLibrary does not solve the problem (too late to sleep?). Do you have any ideas what is going on and how to proceed? I am currently going to remove the code from our DLL step by step to remove the lib dependencies one by one to see if in some moment it will start to work. I will be happy to provide additional information when needed.

Answer 1

Lenovo RapidBoot Shield app was the reason.

"RapidBoot Shield works by delaying non-critical applications and services to help your system boot faster. However, in some instances, RapidBoot Shield may delay an application and/or service that is critical to the system startup. This can cause the system to boot slower than expected or some applications may be unable to start normally."