MLS Freezes During Sync

Discussions around using and interfacing with the Church MLS program.
chmsant
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Posts: 51
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:00 pm
Location: Elk Grove, CA, USA

Re: MLS Freezes During Sync

#11

Post by chmsant »

Back again... issue still hasn't resolved itself. I've reformatted/reinstalled the OS, started from scratch rebuilding the computer as follows:
-OS Install
-OS Updates (Critical only)
-MLS
-Sophos
-TEM
-OpenOffice
-Flash
-Adobe Reader
-CutePDF

Still syncs just fine over broadband, but no such luck when I go back to dialup which is what we need to work. SLC is as puzzled as I am, especially with the reinstall of windows.

Any other thoughts from the community?
russellhltn
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Re: MLS Freezes During Sync

#12

Post by russellhltn »

I see you tried and removed Sophos before. What happens if you try it now? I'm wondering if it really got removed the first time.

The reason I ask is that your symptoms are exactly what I had - and I had to remove the Sophos firewall (and replace it with Windows firewall) to make dial-up work.
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chmsant
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Posts: 51
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:00 pm
Location: Elk Grove, CA, USA

Re: MLS Freezes During Sync

#13

Post by chmsant »

They had me remove it again two nights ago, (it's still off the machine now), with no improvement.
russellhltn
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Re: MLS Freezes During Sync

#14

Post by russellhltn »

Two thoughts:

If you haven't already, try the 1-800 number for the dial-up.

Two - try another modem. I haven't been too impressed by what's been supplied. I have had them go bad and I'm not even in thunderstorm territory. As I remember, switching modems is quite easy. Just make sure Windows sees it as a modem and disable the old one and MLS will find it. I kept a few of the old US Robotics externals around just for this type of thing.

And speaking of modems, you might try checking the dell site for a updated driver.
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chmsant
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Posts: 51
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:00 pm
Location: Elk Grove, CA, USA

Re: MLS Freezes During Sync

#15

Post by chmsant »

I'll give those suggestions a shot. But how do you explain two computers from the same building ending up with the exact same problem? If it were just one of them I'd call it an isolated issue, but that's not the case here.
lajackson
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Re: MLS Freezes During Sync

#16

Post by lajackson »

cswadner wrote:But how do you explain two computers from the same building ending up with the exact same problem? If it were just one of them I'd call it an isolated issue, but that's not the case here.
I agree with you here. I lean more toward a software problem.

But in the interest of continuing the effort, are you able to tell if it actually connects on dialup, and then crashes, or if it crashes making a last valiant effort to connect?

And has the help desk suggested looking at the error logs to see if there is a clue there to what is happening?

As a long shot, how are your phone lines? We had a problem many years ago where the phone lines were so bad to one of our buildings that MLS was taking too long to step the modem down to reach the poor capability of the phone lines, and was timing out. It was not crashing, though. The fix was to dumb down the modem using Windows so it started at a slower speed, but had time to make the connection at either 24 of 12kbps.

And one final thing. When high speed capability first came to MLS, we jumped to auto-detect. It did not work. It usually does now, but at the time, if we wanted to stay on the phone lines, we had to select dialup to make it work. Since you know you need dialup, you might want to make sure that is the selection in the Systems Panel of MLS.

But you are not alone in this problem. Others are having it, as well.
russellhltn
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Re: MLS Freezes During Sync

#17

Post by russellhltn »

cswadner wrote:I'll give those suggestions a shot. But how do you explain two computers from the same building ending up with the exact same problem? If it were just one of them I'd call it an isolated issue, but that's not the case here.
If there was a problem with the local dial-up number, that could explain it.

Since a firewall can cause a lockup, it seems reasonable that blocked packets anywhere along the network could cause the same symptoms.
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chmsant
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Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:00 pm
Location: Elk Grove, CA, USA

Re: MLS Freezes During Sync

#18

Post by chmsant »

lajackson wrote: But in the interest of continuing the effort, are you able to tell if it actually connects on dialup, and then crashes, or if it crashes making a last valiant effort to connect?
It dials in, goes to verifying username and password, will sometimes display that it has connected (but rarely), and that's where they both hang.
lajackson wrote: And has the help desk suggested looking at the error logs to see if there is a clue there to what is happening?
Not yet
lajackson wrote: As a long shot, how are your phone lines?
Phone lines can be ruled out of this one. Issue occurs at the building where they reside, at another nearby building that I used for troubleshooting, AND here at my home where I have brought them for the time being so I don't have to keep driving 30min every time I want to try and work on them.
lajackson wrote: And one final thing. When high speed capability first came to MLS, we jumped to auto-detect. It did not work. It usually does now, but at the time, if we wanted to stay on the phone lines, we had to select dialup to make it work. Since you know you need dialup, you might want to make sure that is the selection in the Systems Panel of MLS.
I've got it set to force dialup.
russellhltn wrote: If there was a problem with the local dial-up number, that could explain it.

Since a firewall can cause a lockup, it seems reasonable that blocked packets anywhere along the network could cause the same symptoms.
Occurs with both of the local numbers AND the toll-free number. Firewall is off completely
russellhltn
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Re: MLS Freezes During Sync

#19

Post by russellhltn »

One item to consider is if it's related to those OS updates. Keep in mind that most machines on dial-up won't be getting those updates. It's a very similar story about my "adventure" - all the dial-up machines were running older versions. Someone updated the machine in question to "the latest" and then it couldn't do dial-up anymore.

Edit: re-reading my adventure as documented in the other thread - the Sophos firewall issue didn't come up until the rebuild. Before that, the symptoms were a bit different. In that case the machine was the "Desktop 5.5" image with all the OS patches. When I rebuilt the machine, using the OEM disks, I ran into a sightly different symptoms that ultimately was traced to Sophos.
Last edited by russellhltn on Wed Apr 24, 2013 6:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Update
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chmsant
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Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:00 pm
Location: Elk Grove, CA, USA

Re: MLS Freezes During Sync

#20

Post by chmsant »

russellhltn wrote:One item to consider is if it's related to those OS updates. Keep in mind that most machines on dial-up won't be getting those updates. It's a very similar story about my "adventure" - all the dial-up machines were running older versions. Someone updated the machine in question to "the latest" and then it couldn't do dial-up anymore.
I keep wondering that too but support has said nothing about incompatibilities... nor has their Tier 2 team.

They sent me a KB article about an hour ago with some other steps to try, one of them verifying that there is a "T" in front of the dialup numbers in options. So I did that and now the machine no longer hangs when dialing. YAY

Now for the bad news... it goes to verifying username and password, seems to terminate the call and then starts dialing all over again. Wash, rinse, repeat three times and then I get the "three options" error message. Again, at least it isn't hanging any longer.

Once I discovered this new symptom, I tried switching to older modem driver versions, uninstalled and re-installed MLS, and deleted and let MLS re-create the dialer connectoid in network connections. Still dials over and over and over.

Any thoughts?
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