FMS6 DWWIN Crash

Since building a Windows XP machine with Service Pack 2, the schools that I support have been experiencing problems on exiting FMS.  What happens is that a Windows message DWWIN.EXE is displayed and then FMS just appears in the task list along with the DBClient.exe application.

Me and my colleagues have tried almost everything we can think of, such as disabling the AntiVirus, Switching off the Firewall and also disabling the Windows Error reporting.  All to no avail.

From my investigations it would appear that the FMS module is not getting the correct response from its interaction with DBClient.exe.  This could indicate that the Sybase database engine has some issues with SP2.  Although I have been unable to isolate what the could be causing the issue.

The crashing on exit appears to be quite random with some machines not experiencing the problem at all, yet others will either occasionally crash, or crash every time SIMS FMS is closed.

One of the things that I had noticed is that this error only occurs on workstations where the SQLAnywhere database service was running and not at a remote workstation.  This has lead me to look into the method of connection between the application and database server.

It would appear that the default method of connection is to use NAMEDPIPES.  This is an internal method of sending data between applications. FMS seems to connect using NamedPIPES regardless of the connection method you specified when installing FMS.

The problem seems to disappear when NAMEDPIPES is removed from the service parameters or from the SIMS32 ODBC settings.  Extensive testing consisting of loading FMS and closing it down has confirmed that FMS is more stable using a single protocol.

So the answer is to remove NAMEDPIPES.

1. Go into the Control Panel and Find the Administrator Tools
2. Double Click on the Data Sources (ODBC) icon
3. Click on the System DSN tab
4. Double click on the SIMS32 entry to edit it
5. Click on the Options button on the right hand side
6. In the Start Command text box, find and remote NAMEDPIPES
7. Also remove the Comma that will imediately follow NAMEDPIPES
8. Click OK to save the changes until all dialog boxes are closed
9. Close ODBC and the Control Panel
10. Test FMS6 to see if this has corrected the problem

It is likely that this problem will re-occur in the future with re-installations or upgrades to FMS6.  Whilst we know that this FIX works, Capita may change the way that FMS is installed in the future or a Windows Service Pack may further complicate the problem.