Restarting Iris after crash
IRIS Health (Community) 2026.1.0.235.2 failing to start - any tips on how to reset things without doing a full reinstall?
We use Ensemble 2018 for our production servers, and have local instances for developers running fine. We are gearing up for the move to Iris, and are using the Community edition of Iris Health to check that our existing productions all work OK.
I installed IRIS Health in mid-May alongside my existing Ensemble instance, and have it configured to auto-start when my laptop boots. Something happened on the 10th of June which means Iris has not successfully started up since then, and won't restart from the command line. As I wasn't using the Iris instance daily, I've only just noticed.
Things I can see:
-rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\FEEDER\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\enslib\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\hslib\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\hssys\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\hssyslocaltemp\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 20:36 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\irisaudit\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\irislib\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\irislocaldata\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\irismetrics\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\irissecurity\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\iristemp\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\journal\iris.lck -rwxrwxrwx 1 cmb cmb 51 Jun 10 07:59 C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\user\iris.lck
Those I presume are lock files - can they safely be deleted?
I get this when starting from the command line (iris start IRISLOCAL), and it takes maybe 10-15s before this displays on-screen:
After IRIS trys to autostart when the laptop boots, one IRIS Qube process is visible in the Windows Task Manager.
Comments
The material I found points to a few recovery checks you can do before reinstalling:
-
Check the Windows Application Event Log and the instance
messages.login the manager directory, because startup failures may be explained there. One example startup failure message specifically says: “Consult the Windows NT Application Event Log for details … You may find additional information in IRIS console log (messages.log) in the manager directory.” [1] -
If the system was interrupted without a clean IRIS stop, a leftover
iris.idsfile can prevent startup in some cases. The guidance is to delete<installation directory>\mgr\iris.ids, because that file stores startup node/shared memory information, is created when IRIS starts, and is normally deleted oniris stoporiris force. If the OS stops without stopping IRIS, it may remain and interfere with the next startup. [2] -
If startup became incomplete after a reboot, one reported cause to verify is the license key: check that
iris.keyexists and has not expired. [1] -
One reported startup log showed WIJ-related recovery messages, including “WIJ file not found,” followed by creation of a new WIJ file, so reviewing
messages.logfor recovery/WIJ messages is useful when the crash happened during startup or shutdown. [1] -
If the instance starts incompletely and logins are disabled, one suggestion mentioned was to try
^STURECOVin%SYS, as it “might be a problem running the startup routine.” [1]
About the iris.lck files: I did not find any returned document that says they are safe to delete, so I cannot confirm that. [1][2]
One additional note from the retrieved material: if the machine name changed and IRIS was not stopped first, deleting mgr\iris.ids is the documented fix for that specific startup problem. [2]
If you can get to the manager directory, the most relevant next step is to inspect messages.log there and compare it with the Windows Event Log entries for the failed start. [1]
Sources:
*** Recovery started at Mon Jun 22 15:43:29 2026
Current default directory: c:\intersystems\irishealth\mgr
Log file directory: .\
WIJ file spec: c:\intersystems\irishealth\mgr\IRIS.WIJ
Recovering local (c:\intersystems\irishealth\mgr\IRIS.WIJ) image journal file...
Starting WIJ recovery for 'c:\intersystems\irishealth\mgr\IRIS.WIJ'.
0 blocks pending in this WIJ.
Exiting with status 3 (Success)
06/22/26-15:43:30:375 (26160) 0 [Generic.Event] Global buffer setting requires attention. Auto-selected 25% of total memory.
06/22/26-15:43:31:101 (26160) 2 [Generic.Event] Failed to allocate 9938MB shared memory using large pages. Switching to small pages.
06/22/26-15:43:31:103 (26160) 0 [Generic.Event] Allocated 9938MB shared memory
06/22/26-15:43:31:105 (26160) 0 [Generic.Event] 8107MB global buffers, 810MB routine buffers, 64MB journal buffers, 633MB buffer descriptors, 300MB heap, 5MB ECP, 18MB miscellaneous
06/22/26-15:43:31:109 (26160) 0 [Crypto.IntelSandyBridgeAESNI] Intel Sandy Bridge or AMD x8 AES-NI instructions detected.
06/22/26-15:43:31:110 (26160) 0 [SIMD] SIMD optimization level: DEFAULT
06/22/26-15:43:31:214 (26160) 2 [Generic.Event] c:\intersystems\irishealth\mgr is locked from
06/22/26-15:43:31:215 (26160) 2 [Generic.Event] WIJ directory locked - System not started
06/22/26-15:43:36:234 (26160) 0 [Generic.Event] Unknown job type exited due to normal termination
06/22/26-15:43:36:718 (34856) 3 irisctl.dll (error during startup):(289) IRIS failed to start. IRIS Control Process terminated abnormally (exit code = 0).This is the content of C:\InterSystems\IRISHealth\mgr\messages.log from when I started from command line.