I'm trying to introduce a bew server to my little network. Its an XP machine, been wiped and XP SP3 reinstalled and brought up to date. Unfortunately its not playing properly. If I open EDBManager, open a session and click View Installed modules it freezes. Same if I try and OPTIMIZE tables (it will do the first couple and then freezes).

I've asked Tim and he thinks there was a problem with XP at some point. The older machine (also running XP SP3) that I want to replace works properly (just sloooow).

I haven't been able to find anything through google and am currently trying to find if there's a problem registry setting by comparing the two machines exported registries. That's going to take a while since I started with over 150k keys for each machine. Deduping has got that down to c30k keys and I'm eliminating stuff now.

Has anyone else experienced this problem and knows the solution?

Roy Lambert

Probably Microsoft's sneaky way of "encouraging" you to upgrade to
Windows 7 or 8.  

--
David Cornelius
Cornelius Concepts

On 11/04/12 02:48, Roy Lambert wrote:
> I'm trying to introduce a bew server to my little network. Its an XP machine, been wiped and XP SP3 reinstalled and brought up to date. Unfortunately its not playing properly. If I open EDBManager, open a session and click View Installed modules it freezes. Same if I try and OPTIMIZE tables (it will do the first couple and then freezes).
>
> I've asked Tim and he thinks there was a problem with XP at some point. The older machine (also running XP SP3) that I want to replace works properly (just sloooow).
>
> I haven't been able to find anything through google and am currently trying to find if there's a problem registry setting by comparing the two machines exported registries. That's going to take a while since I started with over 150k keys for each machine. Deduping has got that down to c30k keys and I'm eliminating stuff now.
>
> Has anyone else experienced this problem and knows the solution?
>
> Roy Lambert
>

David


I didn't realise you'd posted here as well as emailed so I posted my "thanks" in response to another post of yours.

Roy Lambert

Is this a local or remote session? I've found XP to be quite stable
overall so the things i can think of:

1. drive going bad? That would result in random freezing but would
usually only show us as some disk related events in the system log

2. process or shell plugin interfering with running apps. AV is the most
obvious culprit but there have been other known ones (usually something
that does dll incjection into process to add their own menu to window
title bar or such)

3. networking issues. this includes normal net problems but also
disconnected mapped drives that no longer exist and such that might get
queried by windows explorer and then that might freeze things

if you can reproduce it reliably then i would start with looking at
windows logs.

If nothing there then use Process Monitor
(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645) to monitor
EDBManager while it freezes - for me this has helped me narrow down
problems number of times.

Raul

On 11/4/2012 5:48 AM, Roy Lambert wrote:
> I'm trying to introduce a bew server to my little network. Its an XP machine, been wiped and XP SP3 reinstalled and brought up to date. Unfortunately its not playing properly. If I open EDBManager, open a session and click View Installed modules it freezes. Same if I try and OPTIMIZE tables (it will do the first couple and then freezes).
>
> I've asked Tim and he thinks there was a problem with XP at some point. The older machine (also running XP SP3) that I want to replace works properly (just sloooow).
>
> I haven't been able to find anything through google and am currently trying to find if there's a problem registry setting by comparing the two machines exported registries. That's going to take a while since I started with over 150k keys for each machine. Deduping has got that down to c30k keys and I'm eliminating stuff now.
>
> Has anyone else experienced this problem and knows the solution?
>
> Roy Lambert
>

Raul


>Is this a local or remote session? I've found XP to be quite stable
>overall so the things i can think of:

Its fileserver, and if I connect to the rogue with another PC everything is fine its only when running on the local machine but using UNC that I have a problem. Its also fine if I use local drive letters rather than UNC paths.

>1. drive going bad? That would result in random freezing but would
>usually only show us as some disk related events in the system log

None of my disk tests show any problems, and the fact that it runs fine when connecting over the LAN from another machine make me think this isn't the problem.

>2. process or shell plugin interfering with running apps. AV is the most
>obvious culprit but there have been other known ones (usually something
>that does dll incjection into process to add their own menu to window
>title bar or such)

Possible, not the AV though (he says hopefully) since its the same one running on all my PCs

>3. networking issues. this includes normal net problems but also
>disconnected mapped drives that no longer exist and such that might get
>queried by windows explorer and then that might freeze things

Tim thinks he remembers some sort of issue with UNC and some XP service pack/update so I'm reinstalling XP again and testing at various points. Just got the base SP2 install and added AV and whilst it hasn't finished running yet its got further than it ever did before. Another 20 mins and I'll know.

>if you can reproduce it reliably then i would start with looking at
>windows logs.

Did that all it says is the application hung - real helpful

>If nothing there then use Process Monitor
>(http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645) to monitor
>EDBManager while it freezes - for me this has helped me narrow down
>problems number of times.

I hope I don't have to resort to that.

If only there weren't so many settings (150,000 is just ridiculous) I should have been able to sort it out by comparing the registrys on the good and bad machines.

Roy

On 11/5/2012 1:29 PM, Roy Lambert wrote:
> Its fileserver, and if I connect to the rogue with another PC everything is fine its only when running on the local machine but using UNC that I have a problem. Its also fine if I use local drive letters rather than UNC paths.

Ok, that narrows it down quite a bit.

What do your UNC's look like and does the host and IP versions behave
same (as in slow) ? i.e. does "\\myxp\myshare" behave any different than
"\\192.168.1.1\myshare" (i'm assuming machine is named myxp and has ip
192.168.1.1)


if you are using host names instead of IPs then how do you do name
resolution - do you have DNS server or just using windows built-in
netbios/netBT).

Try turning off some of the helper services like "Network Location
Awareness" and SSDP etc.

Raul

Raul

Base SP2 install was fine - I've nstalled SP3 and am testing now.


>What do your UNC's look like and does the host and IP versions behave
>same (as in slow) ? i.e. does "\\myxp\myshare" behave any different than
>"\\192.168.1.1\myshare" (i'm assuming machine is named myxp and has ip
>192.168.1.1)

I'll try that and see. Speed is difficult to asses because of different speed machines but this is what I have for running using UNC pargs (eg \\NLHzero\Business\Work\TfR as the config address)

Old Medion notebook: XP, 1.25Gb RAM, 1.4GHz chip - 49 mins (data on its own HD)
Dell Dimension desktop: XP, 2GB RAM, 2.8 GHz chip - 43 mins (data on its own HD)
Dell Vostro notebook: Vista, 3Gb RAM, Core 2 Duo 2.5GHz - 25 mins (data on Medion's HD)
Dell Vostro notebook: Vista, 3Gb RAM, Core 2 Duo 2.5GHz - 11 mins (data on Dell DImension's HD)

I'm just copying the data to another older notebook (Gateway 1Gb RAM, Celeron M 520 1.6Ghz) running Windows 7 to do a compare

>if you are using host names instead of IPs then how do you do name
>resolution - do you have DNS server or just using windows built-in
>netbios/netBT).

Windows own

>Try turning off some of the helper services like "Network Location
>Awareness" and SSDP etc.

OK I'll track those down.

Thanks for the help so far.

Roy

Raul


Found it!!!!!!!!

Just emailed this to Tim

I've found the culprit - its Anti-MalwareBytes. Why on this PC and not the other and why on UNC paths and not local paths I don't know (but I've sent a support request and asked them)

Roy Lambert

Thanks for update.

Good to know it's one the "usual suspects" so while curious as to why
this machine at least he problem is logical.

Raul

On 11/6/2012 9:24 AM, Roy Lambert wrote:
> Found it!!!!!!!!
> I've found the culprit - its Anti-MalwareBytes. Why on this PC and not the other and why on UNC paths and not local paths I don't know (but I've sent a support request and asked them)