Some PCs Lose Connection to Server

[dvalley]

More FMS 5 woes. We run 5 Mac servers (OS 9.1) on cross platform 100 base T network. One server (G4 400MHz/128mb) FileMaker quit unexpecedly last week damaging some large files (40 to 112 mb). Did recovery, clone, import (the works). (even replaced the software) Now some PCs lose connection to server (no Macs). Host window cannot locate, but can ping server. Service will come back on eventually, then drop again. Sometimes one file, sometimes the whole server. All others users are normal. At wits end. Server set to 80 clients (40 active today) , Files 100 w/ 82 open. HELP!

[Kurt Knippel]

Possibly a bad NIC, cable or hub somewhere is what it sounds like.

[dvalley]

It could be possible, but the lost connections are inconsistant. They occur over six switches and one hub randomly. If it were the server nic, everyone would drop out. If it was a switch, why so many all at once? Why no Mac outages?

[Kurt Knippel]

Intermittant dropouts are more classic this kind of problem than consistant problems. Macs are likely to be running a different NIC than the Windows machines and may not be causing the same errors to occur, this is likly the reason why only some of the Windows machines are exhibiting the problems.

Look for any kinds of commonalities between the problematic systems.

Believe me I have seen problems like this traced back to a bad fuse in a circuit breaker somewhere in the basement and other equally goofy problems.

Easy tests are swapping out the NIC in the server, or swapping out that single hub and see if the problem go away or not.

Elimiating possibilities is as good an investigation as identifying them.

[Anatoli]

Just specify the machine network name or IP in "Specify Host" dialog.

One of our PC IT managers is always saying for such quirks "Just another case to illustrate quality of FileMaker Windows programmers".

FileMaker is the only Windows program having such problems and problems with printing. It is just conforming my opinion about port from Mac version to PC version.

[dvalley]

I actually tried that. It worked for some PCs, but not others. Turns out the problem was a ghost of the server IP address. It conflicted with the network, and the PCs couldn't handle it. I still do not know why the Macs were uneffected. Appletalk was not a server protocol. I changed the server to DHCP and that seemed to solve it.

[Anatoli]

That was different problem then. Not the "disappearing server" bug but IP conflict.