Gah, problems with Lifemapper

[Confused]

Just had a call from a user who's XP Pro machine (Dell Celeron 2.6GHz, 256mb ram) who's PC is crawling to a halt, and taking ages (>30 seconds) to do anything, even just open menus etc in Word/Outlook

Checked the LifeMapper website, and surprise surprise, the DB server is offline. Every single other time someone has complained of a slow PC, it's running LifeMapper, and the DB server is offline.

Anyone got any ideas WTF I can do to stop this happening? It's frustrating to have to say "i don't know", because there's not much I can do short of logging them off, logging on as admin, stopping the service, and logging them back on, which I don't want to do, as i'll invariably forget to start the service again.

If there isn't a known fix to this, then I'm going to have to put another project on these machines.


Garry

 

[MDE]

stop the service and have them reboot the PC before they leave that day?

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: MDE
stop the service and have them reboot the PC before they leave that day?

It is possibly an option, but they've not got Admin rights, so the service will restart when logged off/on again (ie logging me out and them back in)

What I really need is something that will stop this from even BEING a problem. This is the first project I've ever had that i've had to "babysit", which is annoying, because it's a good project IMO.


Garry

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: Confused

Originally posted by: MDE
stop the service and have them reboot the PC before they leave that day?

It is possibly an option, but they've not got Admin rights, so the service will restart when logged off/on again (ie logging me out and them back in)

That's what I meant, the service restarts and then tries sending the work after they leave. How long are the servers down normally?

 

[Confused]

Originally posted by: MDE
That's what I meant, the service restarts and then tries sending the work after they leave. How long are the servers down normally?

Still won't work, because as soon as I (as Admin) log off, and they log on (as themselves, not admin), the service will restart.

The DB server seems to have been down for about 5 hours so far today.

If no one can come up with something that can cauterise the wound, I don't want to keep putting these bandaids on it if it's still going to bleed like hell.


Garry

 

[Unforgiven]

so even after the service is shutdown and restarted it still lags the computer like a mofo because its still trying to connect over and over? what is your cache set for on each machine?

 

[BlackMountainCow]

Yeah, what's the cache setting for those machines. Cause if you always have 200 instock with reloading enabled, that actually shouldn't even appear to be a problem. When I was still in LM I never had that slowdown problem when the main server was offline. But then again that's about half a year ago.

 

[amdxborg]

I've never had any problems with LM installed as a service on my Xp and 2k machines. Only had a problem on one machine some time ago when it kept popping up a window about the LM service... Even today I had it running on a number of machines and didn't have any problems, maybe they're just still their cache...got it set to 200jobs. The DB server doesn't go off for to long...

Looks like it's up and running!

Lifemapper server status.

 

[Unforgiven]

ive never had a problem with a laggy machine when the server is down....i wonder why it is that some people get that and others dont....

 

[imported_MarkP]

I'm not familiar with Lifemapper, but as long as all the machines are configured into a domain (or Active Directory), and you had admin access to the domain you can start and stop services on remote client machines (I'm assuming Lifemapper is running as a service).

You can take this a step further and create a batch file to stop the service on all PCs (in the event that the DB server goes down again), or even configure services to start up during the night and stop again in the AM.

See the following link for details:
http://support.microsoft.com/d...x?scid=kb;EN-US;166819

Hope this helps,
Mark

 

[Confused]

Well, looks like I might have to go round to each PC individually and set the cache size (i can't remember what they are set at).

Not on a domain, so can't do it automatically


Garry

 

[BlackMountainCow]

Maybe you have to Confused, but I guess it'S worth it 'cause LM is a really worthy project. :thumbsup:

 

[HayHauler]

:beer: for you Confused....

Hay

 

[Zbox]

Come back... Come back... To DPAD we will take you.

EDIT:
This may help save some time, rather than going to each PC, use pstools if you can:
freeware that makes any network admin crap his pants.