How legitimate is having to reboot regularly to prevent program errors?

On 2/11/2012 10:53 PM, lewis wrote:

I have a business-specific program - ROWriter - I use at my car
repair shop. It uses a Microsoft Access database and Crystal
Reports. I called support due to a lot of episodes of the program not
responding at one particular workstation and crashes with error
messages about file locking. The tech logged in and expressed horror
that the PC had been running for 6 days! I think this is a lame
excuse on their part It seems to me that with solid software and
barring the CPU fan sucking too much dust, and updates, the PC should
run happily for 6 months.

I haven't yet made a correlation between frequent reboots and less
crashes.

Overall, the network is pretty stable (although see my other post re'
occasional startup problems on a different workstation) and other
programs don't crash. The network is all ethernet -- no wireless..
The recently troublesome workstation does NOT host the MDB. data file.

Comments?

Well, I would do two things:

1. Rigorously check the comp's hardware. A bad power supply or bad
memory stick can cause 'off the wall' problems.

2. Insist on talking to a senior tech, the one you talked to obviously
doesn't have a clue or was hot to go to lunch.

Reminds me of a funny (yet sad) incident I had with Comcast. When TV
programming was interrupted with an error message (I checked all of our
TVs, same message) that said to call Comcast tech support at phone
#_____ , we did as instructed. They said, and I quote: "Reboot your TV"!
... I kid you not!

After a LMAO time out I finally got the know-nothing tech rep to tell me
what she really meant. And that was to cycle all of our TVs through the
channel learning process to find the *one and only channel* that any of
them could possibly receive a signal on while connected to cable TV ...
yea you guessed it, the very same channel that the error message came up
on ;)

In other words, go occupy yourself with some useless task (that they
want you to think you should do every day) until they fix the problem.

John

" lewis" wrote:

I have a business-specific program - ROWriter - I use at my car
repair shop. It uses a Microsoft Access database and Crystal
Reports.

We have something very similar.

It's called "Janna Contact". It's a contact management program that
stores contacts (in our case - customers and prospective customers) in a
MS access database format.

This program is about 10 years old, and we keep using it because there
is nothing else like it on the market. It runs on our win-98 and win-XP
office computers. It's a very solid and reliable program. The database
file is hosted on an old server we have (running win-NT4) and as far as
I know, it's just a simple shared file service. Other computers connect
to the same file and read/write to it concurrently.

Our database file is somewhere around 500 mb in size at this point, and
holds records for about 4,500 contacts at this point.

The NT4 server is generally up for 2 to 6 months between re-boots or
re-starts.

We generally turn off our office workstation computers every night, so I
don't have any experience running the program on any given PC for more
than maybe 8 or 12 hours continuously.

I called support due to a lot of episodes of the program not
responding at one particular workstation and crashes with error
messages about file locking. The tech logged in and expressed
horror that the PC had been running for 6 days!

Comments?

Is your database file located on a server that's running 24/7?

Or is it located on one of your desktop workstations?

Regarding your 6-day up-time, why do you leave your workstation
computers running overnight?

Why aren't they turned off at the end of every business day?

On 02/11/2012 09:53 PM, lewis wrote:

I have a business-specific program - ROWriter - I use at my car
repair shop. It uses a Microsoft Access database and Crystal
Reports. I called support due to a lot of episodes of the program not
responding at one particular workstation and crashes with error
messages about file locking. The tech logged in and expressed horror
that the PC had been running for 6 days! I think this is a lame
excuse on their part It seems to me that with solid software and
barring the CPU fan sucking too much dust, and updates, the PC should
run happily for 6 months.

I haven't yet made a correlation between frequent reboots and less
crashes.

Overall, the network is pretty stable (although see my other post re'
occasional startup problems on a different workstation) and other
programs don't crash. The network is all ethernet -- no wireless..
The recently troublesome workstation does NOT host the MDB. data file.

Comments?

Why not check the CPU fan for dust,
run a RAM test and hard drive diagnostic just to be on the safe side.

Since it seems to be only one workstation that has the problem,
the software is apparently "bug" free.

Since this is obviously important you may want to just replace that
machine if you cannot get it fixed

On Sun, 12 Feb 2012 07:47:34 -0500, John wrote:

Reminds me of a funny (yet sad) incident I had with Comcast. When TV
programming was interrupted with an error message (I checked all of our
TVs, same message) that said to call Comcast tech support at phone
#_____ , we did as instructed. They said, and I quote: "Reboot your TV"!
... I kid you not!

I believe it. I've had to cold reboot my TV before. Yes, it fixed the
problem. It doesn't sound like it would have helped in your case,
though.

On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:53:55 -0800 (PST), "
lewis" wrote:

I have a business-specific program - ROWriter - I use at my car
repair shop. It uses a Microsoft Access database and Crystal
Reports. I called support due to a lot of episodes of the program not
responding at one particular workstation and crashes with error
messages about file locking.

It would be helpful if you'd provide the text of those error messages
since there are several kinds of 'locking' and the solution might
depend on the specific problem being experienced.

Here's a place to start reading. Be sure to click the plus signs to
expand the various sections.

<http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/a...0.aspx>