Workstations locking up at the end of the day - why?

[Mike]

This could be scanner related (?) - we scan at each workstation. What happens is that the workstations towards the end of the day won't scan or when they do, the scan will not attach and the station gets locked up - sometimes to the point that the mouse won't work.

When we shut down and bring them back up, everything works fine. It is a pain to shut down tho' - IDEAS?



Thanks.

[Alice]

Is your virus scan scheduled to run at that time of the day or to go out and get the latest dat file? Check both workstations and servers.
Just a thought...

[Alice]

Now that I'm awake, I thought of something else.

Try to open Task Manager when the PC starts slowing down to see if there are any processes hogging the resources or memory.
You can also look at the Event Viewer after reboot to see if an app is causing problems.
HTH

[Jeff Zylstra]

What anti-virus are you using?  Some have had problems in the past with high CPU utilization.  Symantec comes to mind, and Mcafee just had a major screw-up where their customers machines rebooted in endless loops because of a bad update.  You may also want to check what you are scanning. Some will check inside of archives which takes a lot of CPU to uncompress the files and check them for viruses.  Or, maybe it's time for new and beefier computers.  I have some old ones here that don't have dual cores that almost freeze when AV starts scanning.  Maybe a good cleanup and defrag might help too.

[Mike]

Here is the deal so far ....


- first we use Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
- I also posted to Applied help and the suggestions were

- to get a  external USB hub and use that instead of
directly connecting devices to the computers.

My Tech suggested we

- plug the scanner into the UPS - to make sure power is all good (we did that)
- plug the mouse into the port at the front of the workstation (we did that)

Still, the one locked up. As soon as she brought it down and then back up, worked fine.

HOWEVER, My own station does not get that much scanning done - it locks up too, but seems to be related to me going into the internet, or sometimes I have to get out of our data base and log into one of our other office's data base (We have same server, and have data base for each so that we each work on our own for various reasons). When I do this, it seems only sometimes that relates to the scanner can't finding the folder, although the workstation works perfect, other than that.

I guess my next move will be to  get a  external USB hub ()


Mike

[Gene Foraker]

Forget the external usb hub.   Maybe, if you were having problems on one PC and had checked everything else, but not on multiple PC's.

Find one of the workstations that doesn't get much email or access anything but company web sites and disable the anti-virus.

Try installing Firefox on one and using instead of IE.

Disconnect the scanner completely from one.

Someone mentioned task manager to check cpu usage, that was a good idea.   Check carefully any other software or utilities you may load onto these machines.   Check device manager to see if there are any exclamation marks next to hardware.

It sounds like a classic memory leak.   Some application taking a little extra memory each time you access it and not releasing it.

[Charlie Charbonneau]

It sounds like a classic memory leak.   Some application taking a little extra memory each time you access it and not releasing it.

Hrrmmm Let's see... Outlook, PaperPort & TAM are all classics for hogging memory and not releasing it!!!!

[Bob]

I make all users reboot at lunch when they leave to increase performance and less chance of problems.  Some users just open too many windows notably too many IE pages.   Tam chews away on memory as well as Charlie mentioned.  Outlook too.

Firefox is no saint either.  Often if you check memory it's twice that of any other app as day progresses.  More than outlook.

What are the specs of these computers?  How much memory is on them?  Gig or under could be why.

Once we had this errors but very long ago where entire network would SLOW down in afternoon almost routinely every day.  Was a faulty Network card on workstation.  As the day went and the heat built up in the PC the card would start to fail in afternoon creating chatter on network.  This slowed everyone down.  When this PC was turned off, instantly everyone had performance again.  Doubt your problem and that was long ago so not sure of heat tolerances today.  I suspect run away DLLs (memory leaks) and probably running with 1 gig or under which as day goes, so too does the ram.

Charlies list and do included FF and IE will eat away at resources.  If 1 gig and under, reboot at noon would be my advice as we do here.   We have far less problems with this procedure. 

Hope you resolve! 

[Gene Foraker]

I thought the Firefox memory leak was fixed over a year ago.   Same with TAM, I think it was on version 7.

[Bob]

Check task manager now.  Bet FF at the top of memory.

I thought as you did too but #1 app using memory and on latest version too, is FF.  Next is Outlook.

Tam still uses 16bit host..  Tamhst16.exe Wowexec something..  It's better but still not giving back all resources.  Until all 16bit components replaced it will never be totally efficient with memory.  Top memory users as I write this on my PC are Firefox then Outlook.exe.

[Charlie Charbonneau]

I know closing said programs will release the memory, but wasn't there an option in mem test or some similar program to force the release of memory?  funny thing is MY memory on this is fuzzy!

[Gene Foraker]

I had a utility years ago that would release all unneeded memory.   That was when most programs were 16 bit and the lower 640k was VERY important.

Yes, Firefox has a big footprint and uses lots of memory, but I don't think it increases during the day through a leak.   A leaky program would increase each time you access it and not release it later.   The PC eventually crashes if you use that program enough.    I would bet that either the PC's in question have under 1gig of memory or it is some other program used in the agency.    Scanner software or something like that.   Most of our older PCs have only 1 gig but never have this problem.    I have more memory in my workstation, but reboot or turn it off maybe once every 2 weeks.

[Mike]

I am too on Applied's helpline and here is what mr H_Manhave has to say.....

Download AnVir Task Manager from www.anvir.com and have that running.  You
can watch CPU usage, disk load etc during the day and see if you find
anything increasing that shouldn't be.  Sysinternals MS utilities would be
another way to start tracking things:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx

Of course, simply keeping Windows task manager open and watching the running
tasks, memory usage etc would be possible too.  See if there are multiple
open instances of the same software.  More of the same name being added
every time a scan happens would be a clue.


And here is my reply........

We have installed the www.anvir.com - once done, it sucks you in and asks
for a scan - the one workstation had 450 errors and the other had 189
errors. So I bought for 2 of them, cleaned up the errors,  The rest of the
workstations have the memory usage info (as I did not buy the scan software
for the others yet - good idea or bad idea?)  so when we lock up again, we
can review that.

I have not checked the device manager to see if  there's any exclamation
points there to inducate a problem, but we have changed to another port
during lockup and still this does not fix it. (This in reply to Jeff Zylstra's suggestion which was.........

Silly question here, but have you checked the device manager to see if
there's any exclamation points there to inducate a problem?  This may
indicate which path you should go down -  hardware conflicts or
software/driver/memory issues.  If this is a USB scanner, does unplugging
the cable and changing to another port after lockup do anything for the
problem?


After this.........

I loaded it up (www.anvir.com) and the other 3 workstations had less than 100 errors when scanned - wonder if that is a big deal? I did not buy the cleanup for these others yet.

Will keep you posted - going to the TASCNET conference in Toronto Mon and Tuesday.

[Mike]

Oh yeah, gotta change this photo - thought it was cool - Long Point from a helicpoter watching offshore boats ......it is too small a shot.

Wanna see this area? (40 miles north of Erie)


www.ogradyproductions.com

[Jeff Zylstra]

I doubt that any "scanning" software is going to help.  Most of these are just registry scanners.  If you really want one of those, CCleaner or EasyCleaner both have registry scanners and are free.

Getting back to your problem, I'm wondering if Windows Image Acquisition Service is running on that machine.  I had to turn off that service many years ago, because it conflicted with a scanner and caused it to lock up.  You may need the service, but you may not either.  It's worth a try.

And, have you looked under device manager - Scanner and Cameras to see if everything looks normal and the scanner is recognized?  You may want to look (if you can) after it has locked up.  Also, are there any entries into Windows Event Viewer logs that would be helpful?

[Andrew Carrick]

Our workstations all lock up dead on 5 pm as everybody logs out - the company withdrew flexi-time last year so what was previously a staged withdrawl is now a mass surge for the door. You don't think your problem could be anything like that?