mapserv.exe startup crash on Win Server 2016

[TC Haddad]

mapserv.exe in MS4W 5.2.0 unfortunately seems to crash on startup on Windows Server 2016 (which admittedly is close to EOL in 2027).

The final MS4W 5.2.0 install startup page will show Internal Server Error in place of the main OpenLayers map, and any click to view the demo WMS, WFS, etc. will also result in a 500 server error.

Apache Log and Error Log show the following:

"GET /cgi-bin/mapserv.exe?map=/ms4w/apps/local-demo/local.map&MODE=browse&TEMPLATE=openlayers&LAYERS=all HTTP/1.1" 500 570

and

[client 127.0.0.1:49757] End of script output before headers: mapserv.exe

Other relevant findings to date from command line testing:

Test with map2img SUCCEEDS:

map2img -m "D:\www\tests\test.map" -o test.png

Test with mapserv FAILS:

mapserv.exe "QUERY_STRING=map=D:\www\tests\test.map&mode=map"

Error message produced from this failed test is:
"The application was unable to start correctly (0x000a200)"

Going back in the release history shows that the Windows Server 2016 will successfully run the MS4W 5.2.0 Beta 1, and that the incompatibility with this OS arose in the betas and release candidates that followed.

[Jeff McKenna]

Fixed libfcgi.dll (to fix issues on Windows Server 2016)

[Jeff McKenna]

Thank-you both @tchaddad and @abianchi for the thorough testing and research, this really helped.

The problem was one dll (loaded by mapserv.exe), causing issues because Windows Server 2016 is more strict when loading dlls (than newer versions such as Server 2019, 2022, 2025).

See attached file (libfcgi.dll). Copy that into your /ms4w/Apache/cgi-bin/ and restart Apache.

Please report results here. thanks again.

[Alberto Bianchi]

Works perfectly. Many thanks.

[TC Haddad]

Yes, can confirm working here as well, thanks Jeff!