Good guess, but no. I should have mentioned that I checked that.
There is, though, a postmaster.opts file that wasn't there earlier. It contains
C:/Program Files/PostgreSQL/15/bin/postgres.exe "-D" "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\15\data"
Note the lack of quotes around the exe path.
I'd check if there is already "postmaster.pid" in C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\15\data, left over from a previous abend.
I'm trying to start a v15 service on a Windows 2012 R2 server where it hasn't been used for a while.
The service is set to run as pgUser.
...
If I sub 'start' for 'runservice' and try to start it from CLI, I get
C:\Users\administrator>"C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\15\bin\pg_ctl.exe" start
-N "postgresql-x64-15" -D "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\15\data" -w
waiting for server to start....2023-09-22 12:48:05.438 CDT [4796] FATAL: could
not create lock file "postmaster.pid": Permission denied
Nick Ivanov
Solution Architect