[pchelpers] Re: WIndows NT 4
- From: "John Ford" <john.ford1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pchelpers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 23:44:29 -0500
John,
I have seen similar problems with older cabling for a number of reasons.
While the cable itself is not "bad" it can be susceptible to noise and
corroded connections especially splices. Also I have seen that after a time
changes have been made to a building laying other types of cables alongside
the network cables especially noisy electric wiring and this can cause any
of a number of problems.
I remember using UNIX in the "old" when I helped write software for Bell
Labs and we had problems with large batch files running in the background.
We found that if a certain computer on the network was a "bit" faster than
say another running the same type of files, their output would get into the
server almost at the same time and this would cause a major roadblock an at
times it was the best computer would win and cause the other to crash or
stop functioning.
I have a question for you about the Network that is running Windows NT4. Are
all versions of Windows NT4 the same on the network? Have all been upgraded
to the same version and patches? If you have one or more that are different
this may cause some of your problems as they may be handling the data a bit
differently and the server may sense this as another type of command and
this can cause what you are describing. It is also possible that you have a
bad memory module, or one that is intermittent on either the server or one
of the network's computers. Backing up data is time consuming and a big
memory hog. At times it will bring a very good system to its knees and
everyone looks at it and cannot duplicate the glitch so as to troubleshoot
its root cause. I would check the versions and memory of all on this
particular network and also make sure that someone has not mixed and matched
memory of different speeds. Some will say this is OK but I have found that
to be true. If you have more detail let us know and maybe we can take
another look at it.
John F
-----Original Message-----
From: pchelpers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:pchelpers-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of John Bird
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 7:22 PM
To: pchelpers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [pchelpers] WIndows NT 4
Our firm supports our own software running on all flavours of Windows
networks as well as Novell, SCO Openserver (Unix in other words) and
linux. We have one client running a network with Windows NT4 which has
more problems than all of the others put together.
The sorts of problems are screens just falling out of our software, back to
the WIndows desktop, sometimes with a general catch-all error indicating
the program had trouble loading more of the underlying runtime system, or
the running program file, or sometimes with no error. Also if it generates
a command will crash the parent program sometimes (as example of command is
executing a batch file that copies a number of very large files for backing
up data - I suspect that copying large files has used some big memory
buffers and made something go flaky), or sometimes freezing solid.
I have always suspected there is an underlying network problem, e.g.
involving brief network server outages or time-outs but have never been
able to prove it. Other software on the same network (e.g. Word) also has
similar occasional problems e.g. when saving files or printing, but not so
intensely as our software, which is constantly reading and writing data on
the server. The server event logs do not report any particular obvious
faults. The cabling at this site is quite old (over 5 years).
Question:
Does anyone have any suggestions, or know of any software for monitoring if
a network is having intermittent faults (e.g. due to lots of collisions, or
the server freezing for short periods etc).
John Bird
Beyond Data Systems
john@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Ph 64-3-3654656 or 025 367702
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