Why do I lose comms every 21 days

[rfoote]

System is comprised of Intel dula proc Mobo with mirrored Raid running Win XP pro SP2 and Lookout 6.0.2. No internet or any other apps except Excel

Comms is through FHSS radios with perfect line of sight paths.

Every 21 days, comms come to a grinding slowdown and eventually stops altogether. Only a cold boot restores comms. Have looked everywhere in windows and Lookout for some date dependent schedule or event and none is obvious.

The last time I had the customer re boot the PC, he started Lookout (500 I/O runtime dev system) and got a promt stating that his "Trial Version" would expire after 5 days on May 4 2006.

Could this be a clue as to why the comms break down on a 21 day schedule?

How do I restore his license?

How Do

[Ryan.S]

First, I think you need to make sure that Lookout has been activated. It may be an evaluation version. Did you download it from website or purchase it from NI?
With regard to the communication problem, you can follow this KB to log the serial port data. Then, you can see what happens when communication fails.
http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/CAC576863FF648A186256B5900794761?OpenDocument

[rfoote]

It was registered, back in Oct 05. The serial port file shows nothing except gaps in the times of successful communications, and "non responses" which are bogus.

Sure hope someone can help here... I have been integrating Lookout systems for years and this is the first time I have seen this.

Again, a complete shutdown restores comms.


Anyone think Service Pack 2 could be at issue?

[Ryan.S]

The enabled firewall may block the communicating. But if it's a single computer without any networking, Lookout will work well with sp2.
After Oct 05, have you done any changes to the computer? In NI license Manager, is the license for "dev server 500" still activated? Maybe you need to renew it because of changes to your Computer ID.

[rfoote]

The license says 500 I/O runtime dev and has all the customer info intact. Still came up with trial version expire on 5/4 so we will see what happens then. If I am not mistaken, the trial version only supports 1 I/O unless they changed it in V6.

Firewall basically gets shut off during install at NI's prompt and left off. Otherwise no changes since it was installed.

The computer acts as if Lookout loses the comm port after 21 days... We tried the onboard (Com 1) and PCI serial ports. They all act the same after the time period in question.

I suppose I could reformat and rebuild, but they are 2 hours away, so I want to maximize my time there.

[Ryan.S]

trial version support 10 I/O.
Is 5/4 exactly the 21st day?

[Ryan.S]

Do you think it's the memory cause this problem?
what object do you use in Lookout?  Maybe buffer overflows after 21 days. So you'd better monitor the memory use for your process. Type "perfmon" in Run, it's a helpful tool to record the memory use.  You can add "Counters" for Lookout's "private bytes" and "virtual bytes".
Have you ever tried just close Lookout and open it again when it stops? If this works, it means it may be  a Lookout issue.  

帖子被@Ryan在05-03-2006 03:50 PM时编辑过了

[rfoote]

Thanks for the replies!

Re-starting Lookout doesn't help... A cold re-start of the PC does. I don't know whether 5/4 is on the 21 day schedule or not. I also don't know whether the restarts on the PC reinitiates this cycle.

We have removed and reinstalled Lookout, changed PCI serial cards, tried Com1 (Onboard com port). It is like Lookout loses the connection to the com port.

The builder of the PC thinks the windows registry may have gotten corrupted, and he said to completely re-build the system. (re-format,re-install windows, Lookout etc)

Seems like I have heard of Lookout having registry issues to the extent that NI issued a "registry cleaner". Don't know if that would help... Haven't seen it around either.

[Ryan.S]

It's named msiBlast.exe. you can find it here ftp://ftp.ni.com/outgoing/msiBlast.zip. This tool helps to clean NI products that can't be uninstalled. I'm not sure if it helps you but you can try it to unistall lookout.

[rfoote]

Here is the latest...

We found a warning in Event Viewer. W32 Time Warning.

It happens every 21 days...

I wonder if the OS is trying to get an internet connection to a time server, thus scuttling Modbus comms.

This computer has no internet connection and was never set up for one, but I guess this is one more place to look during OS setup...

We have several SP1 versions out there with no problems. Seems like SP2 is still trying to dial out, even though the OS knows there is no ISP?


I hope this is it, ideas anyone?