DOS App stops working

[PartlyDave]

I have an old DOS application that my company depends on for tracking maintenance issues. It's a DOS-Based Clipper application. The server is W3K Server, SP4.

My users access this app two different ways. One is via a Citrix published application, the other is via RDP.

Occasionally the application fails. Anyone who is using it gets ejected from the app and the DOS box disappears. It makes no difference whether they were running it via Citrix or RDP.

After this happens the application will not run. Not via Citrix, not via RDP, and not even from the server's local console. There are no entries at all in the even logs correlating to this occurring.

The only fix I've found is to reboot the server.

It seems to me like the problem must lie in the DOS subsystem of W2K.

Has anyone ever seen anything like this?

 

[aftertaf]

open task manager after a crash and see if you have any ntvdm & wowexec processes hanging about..
if so, kill em dead

Aftertaf

"Resolve is never stronger than the night before it was never weaker

 

[Spiggsy]

I've found that I can increase the reliability of legacy applications if I run them from a command prompt, as opposed from an executable loading into the DOS environment.

You could always look at running a virtual PC on the server with DOS as the OS too.

 

[TonHu]

Please search the CA Clipper forum (forum288) for a possible solution. There are tools to fix existing Clipper apps to 'behave' running on W2K Server machines.
The best solution would be to add a small .obj file during the linking process of producing the app, that solves the 'time-slicing' problem, known to exist on plain vanilla Clipper apps.

HTH
TonHu