Symptoms

Error 1053 - The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion
 

Diagnoses

After installation, adding to an existing K2 farm, can't seem to get the K2 service started even though the configuration analysis was successful.

- Error 1053 - The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion

When starting in console mode, saw:
"Error Invoking 'StartHostServer' : SourceCode.HostServerLib : Configuration system failed to initialize

Looking at the 'K2HostServer.exe.config', it would seem that they connectionStrings failed to encrypt on server startup. It was also missing information in the encryption section.

 

Resolution

We made the installation account a local administrator and performed a repair from the installation files this resolved the issue. Perhaps the installation account lacked permission to the "C:ProgramDataMicrosoftCrypto" directory to obtain the encryption information needed.

http://help.k2.com/onlinehelp/k2blackpearl/icg/current/webframe.html_Before_InstallationAccount.html