Official release binary fails to install/start service (-6) in GHA

[abathur]

Not usually a Windows person so I may just be misunderstanding something, but I'm getting silent failures that exit -6 trying to use the official release binary in CI that I don't see if I build PAExec within the CI process.

I've pushed up a reproduction of both approaches that includes a dump of service-related event entries: https://github.com/abathur/paexec_repro/actions/runs/19105873352

For reference, though, the failing case (source) basically boils down to:

curl -sSfL https://www.poweradmin.com/paexec/paexec.exe -o C:\Windows\System32\paexec.exe
paexec -s -to 2 whoami

and the working case (source) to:

git clone https://github.com/poweradminllc/PAExec
cd PAExec
msbuild PAExec.vcxproj /p:Configuration=Release
.\Release\PAExec.exe -s -to 2 whoami

This might be a different manifestation of the same issue as:

• 64bit executable or compile instructions #48

But a few qualms led me to open a new issue:

• That report doesn't mention status code -6 (and their case sounds like it would be emitting a positive status, probably 1?)
• The statement there that "bcdedit is not found in the system32 directory" also makes me think they're getting further in the execution process.

[poweradminllc]

That's quite surprising since they should be identical outputs, other than the one that you download is signed. Is the one you download signed, and version 1.31?

I was looking at the logs and on the failed run the service looks to have been installed remotely, but then when the service is started the remote computer claims the executable isn't there. I'm wondering if Windows verifies an executable is present when a service is installed.

[abathur]

That's quite surprising since they should be identical outputs, other than the one that you download is signed. Is the one you download signed, and version 1.31?

Looks like it.

I updated the workflow to run Get-AuthenticodeSignature and Get-Command over the binary from both the download step and the build step: https://github.com/abathur/paexec_repro/actions/runs/19113908253