Paradox on Windows 10 Locking Up

I have a customer that insists on continuing to use Paradox. We have the files stored on a file server that has a share that is mapped to all users workstations as a drive. It has been working fine for years. Recently, we migrated the server to from 2008 R2 to 2016. We now have users complaining about the application locking up especially if inactive for a while. I'm wondering if anyone has an ideas to prevent this from happening?

Thanks,

Jeff

any and all of the usual suspects

oplocks/caching, screen savers/sleep, network cards

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

OK, so what can be done about it. Anything? I'm an outside consultant and know very little about Paradox. The on-site guy that builds all the databases, only knows how to build them. He doesn't know anything about keeping them stable. I'd prefer if them move to something that is still a viable piece of software which I asked them to do in 2008, but they keep creating more databases that are in use all over the company!

OK, so what can be done about it. Anything? I'm an outside consultant and know very little about Paradox. The on-site guy that builds all the databases, only knows how to build them. He doesn't know anything about keeping them stable. I'd prefer if them move to something that is still a viable piece of software which I asked them to do in 2008, but they keep creating more databases that are in use all over the company!

OK, so what can be done about it. Anything? I'm an outside consultant and know very little about Paradox. The on-site guy that builds all the databases, only knows how to build them. He doesn't know anything about keeping them stable. I'd prefer if them move to something that is still a viable piece of software which I asked them to do in 2008, but they keep creating more databases that are in use all over the company!

all of those things are external

on the server and on every machine, turn off oplocks in the registry, turn off all write caching in the machine settings

make sure the machine doesn't go to sleep after the screen saver comes on

make sure the network cards don't go to sleep with inactivity

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

The first thing I would check is whether or not the windows OS on the client side is putting the mapped network drive to sleep.  (Red X in File explorer)..

I use PDOX,  and rather too often walk away and come back another day with a database open.  That in and of itself never causes a problem.    

Howver,  the drive mapping being marked as asleep/disconnected is always a problem and there is a registry edit to fix that.

I don't believe you can turn off oplocks in Server 2016 and Windows 10 because they are using SMB 2.0

one day last week, all the drives were X'd out.. never figured out why

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

So I discovered that with Server 2019 and SMB 3.0, there is an option that disables OpLocks. I did an in-place upgrade (Don't shoot me) to 2019 and ran the powershell command to disable oplocks. Today everyone is telling me that the Paradox database are crawling!! So we went from locking to to locking up and crawling. 

that is totally contrary to historical logic, and I don't have the registry entries to check, for server 2019.. but that applies to the workstations, too

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

I'm also reading that disabling Oplocks can cause network performance issues and it is not recommended to do it. It is to prevent issues with database corruption, not to stop the application from locking up. We don't have issues with corruption.

opportunistic locking was made to control access tables, which work differently than other "database desktops" like paradox, dbase, etc.. over time, it became obvious that it was problematic for access, too

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

Not fully sure yet, but I believe so. However, what we did is not the most secure solution. Our problems were similar in Windows 10 with lockups, but our major problem was that our Server 2016 Terminal Server would have all out failures in Paradox. Since our Paradox databases live on a server that does nothing but store Paradox data and run automated Crystal Reports from Paradox data, we turned off SMB2 and 3 so that it only communicates with SMB1. We then had to enable the SMB 1 client on the Windows 10 machines. This fixed the issues on the Terminal Servers, and everything appears to be working but we only tested with a few mahcines this weekend. We haven't "field" tested it yet. We will know better tomorrow.

We have been running with this configuration for a while with no major issues. Our Crystal Reports are working and Paradox is running as well as can be expected for an extinct program. The only issue we continue to have is when a user has Paradox open but isn't doing anything for a while. It seems to lock up and they have to quit Paradox and relaunch to get it working again. I'm not sure if this is a Paradox timeout issue or an SMB timeout issue, or neither. Any thoughts?

workstations and/or network cards that go to sleep, are usually the culprits.. but yes, SMB2 could be involved, too, if the default locking and caching settings are used.. that's still an evolving science

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

Unfortunately, workstations and network cards going to sleep are not the case here because the users are still working, just not in Paradox. Also, we disable the sleep settings on all workstations for our remote monitoring systems.

Sorry if I missed it...

Is the client using the runtime or the full version?

How many users are connected to the database?

If one user/workstation freezes,  does it only affect that workstation?  or all?

While it is frozen, in task manager,  does it appear that there is any activity on PDXwin32.exe process?

When it freezes - Does it always freeze while the user is displaying the same form every time ? 

Is that form a menu or does it have a table or tables opened? 

There should be to .LCK files in the working forlder. What is the size of the .LCK files?

Sorry if I missed it...

Is the client using the runtime or the full version? Runtime

How many users are connected to the database? It varies. We have multiple databases used by 1 or many people. This behavior occurs on all of the databases regardless of number of users.

If one user/workstation freezes,  does it only affect that workstation?  or all? Only affects that workstation. It doens't really freeze, they just can't access the database without restarting Paradox. Everything else works fine.

While it is frozen, in task manager,  does it appear that there is any activity on PDXwin32.exe process? Would have to investigate further.

When it freezes - Does it always freeze while the user is displaying the same form every time ? Many different forms for many different users.

Is that form a menu or does it have a table or tables opened? I would have to double check with the Paradox expert on our staff.

There should be to .LCK files in the working forlder. What is the size of the .LCK files? Have not looked. Will have to do testing and get back to you.

good questions.. especially the lock file.. if the pdoxusrs lock file gets hosed, it won't delete itself when everyone gets out, even if you reboot the server.. I've seen it get over a meg, instead of 20 or 30k

if this is the case, get everyone to reboot, reboot the server, then kill it

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN

While it is frozen, in task manager,  does it appear that there is any activity on PDXwin32.exe process?

Task Manager reports (PDXwin32.exe Not Responding) – as to activity, can’t say I remember looking at that.  If it locks up again I will

When it freezes - Does it always freeze while the user is displaying the same form every time ? 

Happens on various forms or even if you have a table opened outside of a form

Is that form a menu or does it have a table or tables opened? 

It is both – when it locks, everything is locked.  More times than not though it is a form attached to a table which is opened for data entry

There should be to .LCK files in the working folder. What is the size of the .LCK files?

Can’t say I’ve checked after a lockup, but current .lck files are about 1kb – user lck files vary depending on folder activity.

In July-Aug of 2018, When I converted my system from PDOX 8 to PDOX 11,  I had a similar issue.   Specifically when the user tried to close some objects or even the application.  PDOX would lock up.  It was not always predictable,  but 60-75% of the time it would happen.

What I found was that I and the person before me were sloppy coders. We had a bad habit of opening libraries and not explicitly closing them. 

The app became much more stable after adding code that closed them in the reverse order that they were opened.

The same goes for tcursors.

Also,  I tried the runtime and decided it was very flaky,  so quit using it.

open tcursors are the killer in MANY apps

Steven Green
Senior Software Engineer
Paradox Support Specialist DOS/WIN