comscore sharing violation

[moonspud]

We've been get this on our Ect??? Box a couple of times a day followed by a crash. It seems to happen more often with our backoffice pc on.
Comscore have upgraded our software and still dont know whats wrong
We've tried..new switches. Unplugging everything but the core pcs off the network. Swaped backoffice pc. Disabled and removed antivirus.
The only thing that seem to help was the backoffice pc off for a week we only had one crash. But now its back to crashing several times a day with or without the backoffice.


Any idea as this has been going on for better part of a month and now comscores whole support team is away on an install for a week

[Kanga (James)]

There was an issue in the past where the oplock setting on the NAS caused access violations on some common files. Can you log on to your NAS and check the log?

[Kanga (James)]

Wait, just realized you probably have the pc's mapped to a p: on another computer.

Is this the case?

[moonspud]

Wait, just realized you probably have the pc's mapped to a p: on another computer.

Is this the case?

Yes p drive is the comscore dir in the main pc.
We dont have a nas its interfacing to very old terminals

[moonspud]

The main and thebackoffice are both running xp

[Kanga (James)]

Is "Simple file Sharing" turned on or off on the main PC? (set through "Folder Options")

Do you have an old computer as the interface box for the Comscore lane monitor network, or did they supply you with a new interface box that is sort of like a white flange mount box?

Do you know what might have changed (hardware/software) around about the time problem occurred?

[moonspud]

the lane interface is a cream embedded pc about 4"w 6"d & 10" L with screw holes on the base for wall mounting. it contains a motherboard, serial card and lan card. it's running dos.
i've reseated the cards a couple of time but no change

simple file sharing is turned on.

nothing that i can tell has changed.

we were having crashes last year for a while but the problem just disappeared. don't know if it was a sharing issue then as we didn't have a monitor on the lane interface.

it took two weeks for me to be standing in front of it when it crashed to catch that error

[moonspud]

may have found the issue. looking back to around when the issue started windows update install windows search 4.0 (kb940157). which could mean it's trying to catolog the open files and locking them while it does.
so i've uninstalled it.

time will tell.....

[Kanga (James)]

A known issue with those interface boxes is the reliability of the power supply. We had returned one to Computer Score in the past only to receive one with a similar problem. The box would simply reboot.

It turns out the old ISA board for the monitor network is power hungry, and for whatever reason the power supply was the problem. I bought a good quality standard ATX supply and mounted it externally. Been about 8 months and it's been going strong.

[moonspud]

i'm thinking the power supply is ok. it doesn't just reboot. it kicks up the violation error and then beeps for 60 sec before auto reboot

[Kanga (James)]

Cool. Keep us posted.

It's a good idea to keep an original interface PC as a backup, and also to help troubleshoot.

If the problem continues, your other options are:
- Check the PSU voltage via the BIOS. Computer Score have a procedure for checking and making adjustments to it since the newer Matrix uses the same PC's that are used for replacement interface boxes. Like I said, those PSU's are notorious for issues. We were also instructed to replace all of the PSU switches not long after our install because of the unreliability of them.
- Make sure the comscore p: PC has a fixed IP and that there isn't another PC attempting to use it.
- Turn off simple file sharing on the comscore PC, and see if that has an affect.
- Copy the comscore directory to another PC, share it, rename the PC to comscore (rename the original to something else).

Hopefully Screach might be able to pop in and give some other suggestions.

Good luck sir!

[moonspud]

thanks for the help

Comscore seems to agree it was the windows search indexing service. been 4 days no crashes with backoffice and backend pcs running.

just fyi the pic is what our interface looks like
2012-08-31_17-28-41_289.jpg

and our desks
scorers_slide_low.jpg

[Kanga (James)]

Wow. Nice lowers! Haven't seen them before. We had the mono lowers (molded onto the keyboards) with 26" upper monitors at Chester Hill when it opened in 1990. Had the mechanical keyboard switches and all. Pain in the neck to get all the keyboard buttons to work near the end. All in all a great system.


That's the replacement interface box. If you do have issues with the PSU, you can buy a decent ATX from a computer shop and mount it externally. Have done that to one of our country centres.


Looks like you have it sorted. Good job!

[Ted]

That file organization utility is a resource hungry deal.