Machine locks up running app off network

  • Thread starter Thread starter Pat
  • Start date Start date
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Pat

I have a .NET application that is run off of a shared network drive.
About 5 users (out of 100) periodically have their entire machines
deadlock when they try to run the application. I was able to
reproduce the issue a couple times on one of the user's machines. One
time I had the Task Manager open when I launched the app and the Task
Manager also stopped responding (ctrl-alt-delete did nothing either)

I tried re-installing the .NET Framework, but I was still able to get
the machine to lock up when I launched the application. I also tried
running the application locally and was not able to get the machine to
lock up though this is not an ideal solution. The reason we run it
from the shared drive is so that we do not have to distribute updates
to every user.

I did some research and read about how deadlocks can occur in mixed-
mode dlls if you try to run managed code in the DllMain of the
unmanged code, but we do not have any unmanaged code in our app. Even
if we did, that would only deadlock the process it is running in and
not the whole machine, correct? It seems like the machine is
deadlocking when the CLR is loading the application but before it
starts executing b/c the splash screen for the app isn't shown before
the machine stops responding. Does anyone have any ideas on what
could be causing this behavior?
 
Hi Pat,
I have a .NET application that is run off of a shared network drive.
About 5 users (out of 100) periodically have their entire machines
deadlock when they try to run the application.
Click to expand...

If your application freezes completely along with the computer (as in,
Alt+Tab or Ctrl+Alt+Del won't work) and the computer won't unfreeze itself
within, say, 30-60 seconds, then it sounds to me these PCs have a hardware
or driver related issue.

In Windows, if an application (yours, in this case) would become
unresponsive, only that application would freeze, not the whole computer.
That is, there should be no problem switching to other application or
pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del.

However, if the PCs are older and not very fast, it could be that your
application for some reason hogs all 100% of the CPU time, which would mean
the entire PC would appear frozen. You can use Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc)
to verify if this is the case.

Even so, if only these five PCs are the ones that cause you trouble, try
investigating the hardware. For instance, a faulty network card or router
could cause these issues. Also, if the users report that also other
application cause similar problems, then you know it is not your application
that is causing the trouble.

Hope this helps.

--
Regards,

Mr. Jani Järvinen
C# MVP
Helsinki, Finland
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.saunalahti.fi/janij/
 
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