blue screen

[petermeachem]

A customer is getting blue screens every day or so. It appears to be related to my vb6 programme. It seems to only occur when they are printing a lot of reports via Crystal Reports.
I know this is not a lot to go on, but it is I know so far.
Can anyone point me in some direction or other? Peter Meachem
peter@accuflight.com

 

[petermeachem]

Yikes. I've just read this on

http://support.crystaldecisions.com/library/kbase/articles/c2009841.asp

:-

NOTE: =========

Terminal Server, Citrix, Metaframe, Winframe are not currently supported platforms for Crystal Reports.

Is this correct?

(In case you've noticed, I'm posting this on Citrix and Crystal forums) Peter Meachem
peter@accuflight.com

 

[CitrixEngineer]

I'd never seen this article - I like this bit "Not a Crystal Problem".

I was amamzed to discover about a year ago that actually no software is officially supported on Terminal Server. MS Office 2000 and XP include a "Transforms" file in their respective resource kits, but that's the limit of compatibility. The rest is down to tweaking and fine tuning by Citrix admins.

Two areas for you (or your Citrix admin) to investigate, however (I'm assuming that the server(s) are blue screening, not the clients);

1. The ubiquitous printer drivers issues.

2. Use Filemon and re-create the crash scenario. It may be down to permissions on temp locations.


I hope this helps

 

[petermeachem]

The ubiquitous printer drivers issues.

They may be ubiquitous to you, but not to me. What sort of things should I look for here? Peter Meachem
peter@accuflight.com

 

[petermeachem]

This is a reply from the customer when I asked them how the printers were set up.

All remote site printers are installed on our Wins_server using Axis Jet
Direct Boxes attached to the printers.

Therefore all thin client users simply have one or more of the printers set
for use running off of the Wins_Server. The printers are not installed on
LANs at the remote site as ultimately there will not be any PCs only thin
client terminals at these site.
Peter Meachem
peter@accuflight.com

 

[CitrixEngineer]

faq48-544

In brief;

Some (read many) printer drivers can (and do) cause Citrix/MS Terminal Servers to blue screen.

There are two basic ways of dealing with this;

1) By setting up aliases in the wtsuprn.inf file on the Citrix servers. This is not complex, but can be very time consuming as you try to match each of your users printers to the closest "compatible" alias. With thousands of users, this can be a real headache.

2) By using a universal printer driver or similar tool, such as Uniprint or Screwdriver.


...I almost forget the third - keep posting back here with specific printer issues, if that is indeed at the root of your problem

I hope this helps

 

[petermeachem]

I'm shunting messages between you and my customer, which seems a bit silly. Are you self employed, or could you help the customer out anyway. If so, send me your email and I'll put them in touch with you. Where abouts in the uk are you? They are in Corby. Peter Meachem
peter@accuflight.com

 

[CitrixEngineer]

I am employed by a company, and can only help out on this forum in my current method of leaving a post when I get a moment.

I can be contacted at CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk - but I don't check it more than once a day - and never at weekends

The documents that are linked to in the FAQ should provide ample information on printing, and Filemon is available at

http://www.sysinternals.com

- just don't run it on a busy server.

I hope this helps

 

[petermeachem]

Shame. I've sent your info off to them. They are presumably digesting it. I'll keep you posted if that is ok. Peter Meachem
peter@accuflight.com

 

[petermeachem]

A little progress.

Apparently, the thing only crashes when the printer is an HP 4050 (think that was the number) and they print a lot of pages in landscape.
They put 'the latest' printer driver on. This didn't crash, but it refused to print landscape, everything came out in portrait, so they put the old one back.

Does that make sense? Peter Meachem
peter@accuflight.com