FM7 Network Opener script fails

[noahsatellite]

I am using FM7 Pro on 8 Windows XP Home (SP2) machines and having a couple network issues. There is only 1 database being shared over the network and I have an opener script on each client machine that opens up the remote file, maximizes it, then closes itself.

Every day when the office opens, there are one or two computers that do not open the network file. I run the opener file and it waits as if it's doing something and then just goes to a blank FM7 windows (as if I opened FM7 from the start menu without specifying any file to open). Then I have to press File->Open Remote (sometimes more than once actually before it sees the remote file).

I saw an issue like this online that was related to having more than one network card in the computer. I went around and disabled the Ethernet card on each computer (the office network is WiFi based), but that didn't seem to do much of anything.

This is too much for most of the people in the office to figure out. Any ideas as to a solution?

Thanks in advance,

Noah

[CyborgSam]

Since this happens early in the day, I suspect that something is not awakening from sleep or starting up robustly. Do the computers get shutdown at night and restarted in the morning? Do any of the computers have Hibernation enabled in the Power Options control panel (if so, I'd turn it off)? FileMaker may not be awakening from sleep with its network intact, XP Home's networking is not as robust as XP Pro's.

Way long sentence... If all the computers are off and then turned on, and then the database is open on the "server", and then all the clients are turned on, and they try to connect: does it work?

[noahsatellite]

I guess i didn't make it clear enough. The server is always on -- in fact all the machines are always on. Sometimes even during the day the opener fails if FM was closed on the client for long enough.

I made the script in FM (new database, created a script to open the database, then close itself) -- maybe there is a more reliable way such as a shortcut or something... Or maybe it just needs a longer timeout on the remote connection...

I almost forgot to mention -- though the clients all have an IP assigned dynamically, I set the server to a static IP because I thought that might be an issue -- didn't seem to change anything though.

Noah

[CyborgSam]

Make sure the PC serving the file has "System Standby:" set to Never. Also try setting "Turn off hard disks:" to Never, this latency may be an issue in your case.

Check your router's IP address setup to be absolutely sure the static IP is not in the range of dynamic IPs.

Also check the router's settings to make sure the sub-domain masks for both the dynamic and static ranges are properly entered. The geekiness of this gets complicated fast, so ask if it's unclear... Most routers allow both static and dynamic on the smallest commonly used subnet (255.255.255.0, allowing 253 addresses [.0 and .255 are reserved]). An example: your router is setup to use the private Internet 192.168.0.0 with the mask 255.255.255.0. Then both the static and dyanmic IP ranges need to be between 192.168.0.1 - 192.168.0.254 (routers usually uses .1, I'd avoid anything above .250). The static IP computers need to use the same mask 255.255.255.0.