WATCH OUT - DSC 7.1 does not like Hibernate

[bdougr]

We had an operator drop the telephone onto the keyboard yesterday. The Standby button on the Dell Precision computer put the system into hibernate mode.

Once the computer was reactivated the computer cpu usage was maxed at 100% (both processors) for over an hour. The citadel process had consumed 6gig memory (2gig ram + 4gig virtual).

After an hour I had to get the system back on-line so I deleted the database - attempted to use MAX but it would not even respond.
Database size was 32gig and contained one year of data (also mirrored on a second system)

this is just a friendly note to disable the sleep buttons. We superglued a plastic cover over the button.

[Arun_V]

Hello bdougr,

Do you have NI Keyboard Filter installed in your computer? You can find out by going to Start>>Control panel>>Add Remove Programs>> National Instruments Software and hit change. A new window will come up with a list of all NI software you have in your computer. Now select the DSC module and hit Modify. Now go ahead and deselect NI Keyboard filter to uninstall it. This is a known issue that we are working on right now. Uninstalling the keyboard filter should take care of the hibernate issue.

Regards,

Arun V
National Instruments

[bdougr]

Are you saying that the keyboard filter corrupted the database?
I had assumed that it was the act of windows2k abrubtly going to hibernate that killed the files.

If it was the keyboard filter you should immediatly issue a patch that disables the problem software. This would be the second issue I had with this weird piece of NI software. (Last month a new PC would not shutdown with a USB keyboard attached to the computer)

For my part we permanently made the button impossible to push.

[Arun_V]

Hello bdougr,

The NI Keyboard filter does NOT corrupt your database. It does not let your computer to shutdown or go into hibernate. When the computer tries to shutdown or hibernate and if you had the NI keyboard filter, then you would see the computer hang up in the process of shutting down or hibernation. Honestly, this is the first time I am hearing this issue (the hibernate key corrupting the database). I will try and replicate it on a test datbase.

Is there anyone else who has experienced this issue before?

Thanks,

Arun V
National Instruments

[bdougr]

ah Thanks Arun,

This is the first time that I know where one of my systems has gone into hibernate.
This however is not the first time that a database became corrupt and required a complete erasure. ( I even sent a DVD with a corrupt database to one of the DSC engineers shortly before he stopped working on DSC support)

Any power problems with DSC running or if the dataengine needs to be forced off will cause problems. The problem is compounded since citadel does not tell you what it is doing when it goes thru each and every file - eating memory as it goes.