Network Users Lose Database Connection

[sstaylor]

Greetings,

I am having some issues with an existing Act! 2006 Premium for WG installation, and require some advice.

Right now, I want to focus on users being apparently disconnected from their shared database during the day.

A user will have Act! running, logged into the shared database. After some period of inactivity, they try to access a record, and receive the error message;

Error: "The database could not be accessed. In order to access this database, check your network connection and verify that your database server is available. It may be necessary to disable any firewall software..."

They are able to navigate to the folder on the server hosting the database, see the database, and try to launch it. However, they again receive the above message. If they reboot their computer they are able to regain access to the database. As they are able to access other resources located on the server after the error message is presented, but before they reboot, I suspect that this issue is related specifically to Act!, and not a general Windows idle-timeout issue.

The server is running Windows XP Pro, latest SP, with SQL Server 2000, ver. 8.00.818. There are 4 local users, with one part-time remote user, accessing the database via VPN. I considered the possiblity of the remote user somehow messing up the mix when they access the database, but I think that I have verified that this is not the case.

Any suggestions/assistance would be most appreciated.

Cordially,
Scott Taylor

[Bill]

After receiving the message on the client machine running ACT!, does it take a reboot of the OS or does closing ACT! and re-launching it allow for re-connect?

A couple of thoughts:

• on the machine hosting the workgroup database, launch ActDiag (Start>Run>ActDiag) and click on the SQL Connections task.  See if you can see that machine physically-connected for validation.
• from the client machine (that can't connect using ACT!), try seeing if they can:
• PING the database machine (by name or IP address)
• TELNET the machine and SQL instance;  you can see the TCP/IP port # the SQL instance is being used on the database host machine on the Server Security panel of ActDiag.  Command would be: telnet machinename port#

You may also be experiencing brief network interruptions (for more than a minute) that could cause the SQL connection to close "behind the scenes" on the user.  Also browse the Windows Event Viewer for such related messages...

[GLComputing]

Scott,

XP can sometimes drop connections when it gets busy, which is why it's not normally used as a server... is this machine actually being used or is it just serving?

You might find something in the Event Log at the time, either in the server or the client?