SAS 9.4 PC Files service missing

[tpr]

I have some Windows 2016 terminal servers running SAS 9.4 TS1M5 and 32 bit Office 2016. I'm setting up a new server, so I've installed Office and SAS but it doesn't seem to be installing the SAS PC Files Server service. That is missing from the list of services. I've uninstalled and reinstalled from scratch, but no dice. Proc setinit shows that it's licensed, and I verified that SAS/Access for PC Files was selected during the installation. I've downloaded from https://support.sas.com/downloads/package.htm?pid=2389# . The first time I installed it, I got an error about the Private JRE. I just tried again after finding a couple more hotfixes. No errors, but there's still no SAS PC Files Server service. The pcfile_xxx logs show "There were no files to be processed" and a bunch of file names. No errors, and nothing that I can find in Event Viewer.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[SASKiwi]

Do you see it listed under installed products? 

[tpr]

Yes. "For SAS/ACCESS Interface to PC Files ...
Custom version information: 9.4_M5

[SASKiwi]

If it is not showing as a Windows service in Windows Task Manager then I suspect something went wrong in the install process. SAS Tech Support sounds like your best bet.

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

You may also want to run proc product_status to see if the install was successful. If so you see something like this in the log:

302  proc product_status;
303  run;

For Base SAS Software ...
   Custom version information: 9.4_M4
   Image version information: 9.04.01M4P110916
For SAS/STAT ...
   Custom version information: 14.2
For SAS/GRAPH ...
   Custom version information: 9.4_M4
For High Performance Suite ...
   Custom version information: 2.2_M5
For SAS/ACCESS Interface to PC Files ...
   Custom version information: 9.4_M4

With the last two lines the important ones for PC Files.

Can you share some code with how you attempt to use the PC files?

The PC files server may behave a bit differently than you are thinking of as a "service". You may have to point to a specific data sources using the LIBNAME statement such as

Libname mylib pcfiles "c:\folder\somespreadsheet.xlsx";

as an example connecting to an Excel spreadsheet. Syntax may require additional options depending on file type and location.

[tpr]

Thanks. Those lines show up, per my reply that probably showed up right when you posted.

Our programmers have been using this combination of SAS and Office for years, so they've been using the correct program code for their excel file imports. Most of my servers are VMs so I was able to create most from a vm template, but this is a hardware server for a special project so I have to install everything from scratch. I've had some odd but minor problems with PC Files in the past, but I've never seen anything like this.

[ballardw]

Does the SAS PC Files Icon appear in the programs sidebar under SAS? If so, what happens when you click on it?

Have you tried running a Libname statement regardless of whether the service appears in the list? If so, what sort of error appears?

By 32-bit do you mean local Office 14(? don't remember the versions any more) or Office 365 of some flavor?

A long shot, does the affected machine have a 64-bit office installed? I wouldn't expect this to cause errors but with Office I'm always skeptical.

Another long shot, try Libname Excel to read the files if the purpose is only importing data.

[tpr]

Thanks. I'll try the libname statement tomorrow. The office version is 32 bit Office 2016. Office 365 needs network access and this server is behind a strict proxy for data security.

[tpr]

Hey, all. I'm happy to report that testing with a libname statement and a proc import worked on csv and xlsx files. The "SAS PC Files Server" service still does not show up on this server like it does my other servers, so that's odd but ultimately cosmetic. I think the last reinstall of the PC Files Server I downloaded from SAS yesterday must have fixed it, so I should have run a test instead of assuming that the missing service was the problem.

My code might be a little different than what the programmers use, so I'll ask them for an example and test with that.

Thanks for the responses.