November 4, 2009 5

Hamachi: Failed to connect to the engine

By Tuinslak in Errors, Software, Windows

After getting the Hamachi 2 update (without a prior notice, nicely done… No more auto update if they continue to break stuff) I started to notice a bunch of XPs receiving this error after a reboot: Failed to connect to the engine.

Hamachi is auto started, at boot, because we have a shortcut in the startup folder. No other way to auto start the free version (as far as I know).

Yet, when starting Hamachi manually after the PC had booted, there were no more errors. So it’s clear Hamachi tried to start before the engine (see services.msc -> LogMeIn Hamachi Engine or something) was started.

And reinstalling Hamachi only seemed to work on one of the XPs.

As there’s no easy way to delay the starting up of a program, I used some dirty vbs and batch… Kinda.

Here’s my solution:

Place both scripts in the Hamachi directory (c:\program files\logmein hamachi\)

hamachiStart.vbs:

1
2
3
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.Run chr(34) & ".\hamachi.bat" & Chr(34), 0
Set WshShell = Nothing

hamachi.bat:

1
2
3
4
@echo off
ping -n 30 127.0.0.1 >NUL
"C:\Program Files\LogMeIn Hamachi\hamachi-2-ui.exe"
exit

Hamachi.vbs will start the bat file. This seems to be the only way to prevent a command prompt from opening (and staying open all the time).

Hamachi.bat will ping itself for 30ish seconds (don’t think there’s a cleaner way to do this…) and then start the Hamachi GUI.

If you’re still having problems, increase 30 to something like 60 or even more.

Anyway, last thing you’ll need to do is to make a shortcut of hamachi.vbs, and drag it into the startup folder.

Reboot, wait a bit, and enjoy.

  • Twitter
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Facebook
  • Ping.fm
  • Reddit
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • Tumblr
  • MySpace
  • LinkedIn
  • email
  • PDF

Tags: ,

5 Responses to “Hamachi: Failed to connect to the engine”

  1. Estares says:

    You can do this without vbs. Just use “start” before path to hamachi:

    > @echo off
    > ping -n 30 127.0.0.1 >NUL
    > start “C:\Program Files\LogMeIn Hamachi\hamachi-2-ui.exe”
    > exit

    You can also use “hidcon.exe” to start your bat file in hidden console widow.
    > hidcon hamachi.bat

    I found this tool rather hard to find now…
    so I’ve uploaded it here:
    http://rapidshare.com/files/306580834/hidcon.exe.html
    MD5: B2DADAB18C318443301D0087CD7200BA

  2. Tuinslak says:

    If you’re still having problems, I got the recommendation to add this line (before starting the ping and start hamachi-2-ui.exe:

    net start “LogMeIn Hamachi 2.0 Tunneling Engine”

    This will start the service if, for some reason, it didn’t start yet. You need to include the quotes.

  3. Mike says:

    IT WORKS! but with the two files .vbs and .bat!!! thanks!

  4. Sektor says:

    You can also launch the service with “net start Hamachi2Svc”

  5. Adam says:

    I wrote this little program for hamachi 2.

    it set Hahachi service autostart to manual.
    It start hamachi :)

    Download link:
    http://cid-99b22ff1d200a1db.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/Hamachi2svc.zip

    http://www.mediafire.com/file/imianncom3l/Hamachi2svc.zip

Leave a Reply