Today I had to try and figure out why I could not publish a map file to ArcGIS Server. The message I got was
“Server Object instance creation failed on machine foomachine. Document D:arcgisservermapsmymap.mxd can not be opened.”
When I checked the permissions on the file all looked good – the ArcGISSOC user had access to the file. So where’s the beef?
Instead of messing around in the security settings for hours on end, I simply fired up ArcMap as the ArcGISSOC user. It’s easy to do – just drop this into a batch file, and you’re off and running…
runas /user:youdomainarcgissoc /profile /savecred “C:Program FilesArcGISBinArcMap.exe”
Then, try to browse to the file in question and open it. In my case, the problem was ArcGISSOC could not access the D: drive, which seemed to override the explicit permission I granted on that file.
