No Response

[Neal Achterhof]

RE: No Response

Charles,
If you ever figure out what is going on, I would like to hear about it.
I just put V6 on a brand new XP box. Downloaded the updates, put my database routines in place.
All I do is import from flat files, mash the dbf's together, then export back out to another set of flat files.
The import works fine.
The export start off just fine. As soon as I open another window, or switch windows, or click anywhere on the Alpha 4 program, it LOOKS like it locks up. The counter stops running, hour glass on the screen, and then I get the "Not Responding" in the Title Bar.
When I check the Task Manager, the Applications Tab says Alpha 5 not responding. But the Processes Tab shows alpha5.exe going like crazy. When I do "properties" on the file being exported, it keeps growing in size.
So.. it Alpha 5 is still actually running.. it just doesn't look like it is. Quite aggravating.

Neal

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: No Response

Neal,

Are you running these separate operations in one continuous script?

Have you disabled opportunistic locking in XP ?

-- t

[Neal Achterhof]

RE: No Response

Tom,

The operations are seperate (the imports are in one macro, the exports are in another).

I looked at the locking you spoke of.
According to MS, it can be disabled here:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MRXSmb\Parameters\OplocksDisabled
REG_DWORD 0 or 1
Default: 0 (not disabled)

The key was not in my registry at that place (I did not find "Oplocks" anywhere in the registry), so I added a new key with a value of "1".
Rebooted, ran the exports again, got the same thing.

Am I turning off the locking at the right place?

Thanks,
Neal

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: No Response

Neal,

I'm sorry to say I'm not an expert on the inner workings of the XP registry.

Suggest you break the imports down and do them separately by hand.

Ditto for the exports.

One at a time. Slow and easy.

Do they work correctly?

-- t

[Melvin Davidson]

RE: No Response

Just a thought, but is it possible you have virus protection software that is kicking in a scan during long periods of inactivity? Also, you might want to check scheduled tasks in the control panel for a similar situation.

Finally, when happens, check your task manager and sort by CPU usage and/or memory usage to see if some other program is eating up resources. Despite you best efforts, it's quuite possible spyware can sneak in there. Ebate is one that has been of particular annoyance to me.

[Charles Hoens]

RE: No Response

I tried what Tom Cone mentioned in turning off Oportunistic Locking, but that didn't solve the problem for me either.

The guys at Alpha say they are running XP and have had no problems. I'm getting it on two XP machines and with all of my A5 programs. I've found that it happens only if I leave an A5 program maximized on the screen and then walk away allowing the XP screen saver to kick in.

If I stop the screen saver I do not have problems, nor does it happen when just the control panel is showing rather than an app.

I too get the massive CPU running for A5, along with the Not Responding error. This tells me that A5 is running some process or other that the OS has determined to be "looping".

That's the extent of what I've been able to find out so far. It's troublesome, but I'm working around it.

Charlie

[Charles Hoens]

RE: No Response

Mel,

Thanks, but these problems came to my mind early on and were eliminated. The CPU that A5 runs is generally at the top of the list and I have a gig of ram.

Any other thoughts greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Charlie

[Neal Achterhof]

RE: No Response

Well,
Found out even worse news. The imports and exports (running seperately) do the same thing as the macros. I just have to check faster. I still get the "Not Responding", even though it is actually working at what it should be doing.
When the macro hits the next operation, the A5 control panel comes back, until you change the focus again, even if just changing focus to the Task Manager!
I have tried just about everything. I did notice that a lot of the Options that needed to be Yes or No, were blank. Ok, set all of those to something.. same results.

Like Charles says.. it can be worked around.
All I use A5 for is to do massive record processing, so it is not such a big deal for me.
As far as anything else running on the system and getting in the way. Well, there is nothing else running except XP.
Task Manager shows A5, and the "System Idle Process" as the only things taking up CPU useage. This is a brand spankin new XP box, and it's only mission in life is to run Alpha 5.

I am starting to think there has got to be something that is not initialize correctly when A5 is first installed. I did move the entire database, the routines, everything over to the new box after installing A5 on it.
The only way to see if this is the problem would be to build some new routines from scratch on that box, and see what it does.

I'll let you know.

Neal

[Charles Hoens]

RE: No Response

Neal,

One thing you have mentioned in passing and may need to understand is about the OS. XP is patterned after DEC DCL or the old, but very trustworthy Dec Command Programming Language. It the system that is in wide use around the world running VAX/VMS systems. The reason it was used was to keep the system up and running without the need for a reboot, which is what you commonly see in the PC based systems such as DOS. Win95, Win98, Win2K and now XP have helped take the original DOS architecture in that direction in order to provide greater stability.

When I was a lead systems engineer for the VMS systems, it was common to have "looping" processes in the machines. These were picked up by the system as the same set of code hitting the CPU over and over again. That being said, if your program is running through iterations of processes all of which are basically the same, XP will see them as looping. Once they are identified, XP may show the application as "Not Responding" when in fact it is just grinding away at what you asked it to do.

You can do a couple of things. First, clean up your code and try to get it to work more efficiently. Second, you can "wait it out" which is what you described you did. If the code is correct, i.e. it's not adding 10,000 records to your 100 record dbf or doing some other crazy thing and you have it optimized in that the looping you are asking it to go through is proper, then that's all you can do.

You may want to have someone on the forum look over your code to see if there are ways to speed it up or perhaps, write the progress to an indicator so you could see it is working. The progress meter is a good idea because it shows different code to the CPU and will sometimes stop the "Not Responding" error.

Good luck and hang in there. A5 is still the best bang for your buck!

Charlie

[Neal Achterhof]

RE: No Response

Charlie,

Thanks for the feedback.
It is definitely doing what I am asking it to do.. no problem there. The imports and exports run just fine, I just can't tell how far they have gotten.
It may very well be that XP is just "confused" that it keeps doing the same thing, and shows the program as "Not Responding". Still, I would think it should be able to keep the A5 Control Panel going with the counters down at the bottom!
There really isn't any "code" that I wrote, it was all just selecting various operations. "Import these, make a data set, export it." No real programming involved, nothing fancy at all. I wouldn't have a clue on how to even put the "progress bar" on the screen, or if it would even help. Figuring out the "bells and whistles" is for future consideration.

Thanks again,

Neal

[Melvin Davidson]

RE: No Response

Neal,

If your main problem is keeping track of the progress,
you might want to consider using the PROFILER_BEGIN() &
PROFILER_END() functions.

Or better yet, try the Addin.run("audit_trail"), which gives
you an ascii file output of updates.

Search for "audit" in the xbasic .chm

[urbanski]

RE: No Response

If you tried using Alpha Sports and it still happens, I might consider looking at changing the screen saver. I assume you havre to sign in again when the screen saver kicks in. Wht if you turn that feature off?

Jim

[Charles Hoens]

RE: No Response

Doesn't happen. That's the workaround. But I can't ask all my users to do this because of the security it provides.

Charlie

[russ Boehle]

RE: No Response

This probably has nothing to do with it but have you tried checking to see if you have the latest video driver. I recently got a new bigger LCD monitor, plugged it in and A4v6 (not A5) and some other DOS apps that I use showed a screen without any text. There were no other changes so this should not have happened. Got a newer video driver, problem solved.

Might be worth a check if you haven't.

Russ

[Jerry Gray]

RE: No Response

Charlie,

Just out of curiosity, are you using the default screen saver that comes with XP? Have you tried using one that is not supplied by MS?

If my screensaver comes on, when I move the mouse I too get a white screen, but only for a second or two then A5 comes back in as normal. I sometimes get this when I have switched to IE and back again also, but again only for a second or two.

--Jerry Gray