Apologies at forehand, for the amound of information, but I tried to be as thorough as possible. If any information is still needed, please let me know.
Background:
I am a junior mainframe programmer, who started out a few months ago with learning the mainframe. I know my way around pretty well, when it comes to jcl, cobol etc, but when it comes to maintenance of the mainframe, I'm not all that familiar.
I'm currently following a course, using the mainframe of the institution (which is an emualtor, not a real one). Sadly my teacher is still learning how to maintaine a mainframe, so he doesn't really know either. So calling the tech department is not an option.
Basically I am hoping that someone here, heared of the problem before. I don't know where to look. If the problem is in my wifi connection, or if it is with the mainframe. Seems to go both ways.
Specifications:
My OS: Windows 7
Laptop: HP Elitebook, with dualboot Windows7 and Linux
Mainframe emulator: Tom Brennan's Vista TN3270, Z/OS
Just in case I added my Vista.ini below
Connection: through external ip adres
N.B. I have reinstalled wifi drivers, this didn't do anything.
Problem:
The mainframe workt properly up until 2 weeks ago, when my provider performed some maintenance on the internet in my neighbourhood. Since then, I am experiencing internet drops. They happen every +- 5sec and last (as far as I can tell) around 20-30 ms (both on wifi and cable).
It is not long enough for the browser and other applications to notice. Even my windows doesn't notice the drop. My mainframe connection however does notice the drop. My connection with the mainframe is not lost completely. The screen stays open and visible, but pressing any button does nothing. I then have to close vista, reopen, loggin again and then it works fine. Till 5 minutes later, when it starts over again.
Last night I pinged the IP and at the same time, pinged google, in order to figure out if it whas only the mainframe connection with a problem, or not. The ping did fine for minutes on end, until I started Vista after a few minutes and then both pings crashed instantly, couldn't send or receive any packages anymore.
Extra info:
I called my provider and they send a tech guy, they say there is nothing wrong with my internet connection.
Connecting to the external IP adres, from another wifi connection gives me no problems. It only goes wrong from my home addres / wifi.
Other people on the same mainframe have no problems, no mather where they are.
There is another mainframe I can reach and that one does not seem to have any problems what so ever.
Other ssh / external connections to other IP adresses don't give me any problems.
I tried testing it on Linux and other computers, but without having Vista to try, i don't now how else to test the problem. Since browser and other applications have no problems.
I get no message what so ever when the mainframe connections stops.
I looked at a number of logfiles on the mainframe, but basically I don't know which ones I need to find a possible clue or answer.
If someone knows anything, even just to send me in the right direction, it would be very much appreciated. Having to reconnect every 5 minutes is starting to be really annoying and keeps me from my studies/work.
[Vista]
LastSession=standard.ses
Hostnames=
IPnames=
Portnums=3270,23
TN3270E=1,1
SSL=0,0
Lunames=,
KeepAliveTime=60
Related
I have a real problem, that started from yesterday. I was using my Dell Laptop until I found something called sc, after making my laptop on sleep mode, I tried to get out some piece that I discovered it was for ssd, when I returned it correctly and tried to turn on my laptop again, it showed me the blue screen with a stop code : >"inaccessible boot device".
after a day, I tried to open it again, but nothing happened, I tried alot, searching the internet about the matter but nothing. I also asked someone I know and he told me that ghe laptop needs some format.
Please, Help me finding a solution, because I don't want to format, lots of informations and apps are installed in it, also, there are lots of projects I finished and there is a very important project I am working on, please, help me find a solution without format, and thanks.
Recently installed AutoHotKey to remap some keys in order to play a video game. It seemed simple/attractive enough at first. Was not really sure of how it worked but found the .chm file in the download which states in the first line of Usage & Syntax/Using the program:
AutoHotkey doesn't do anything on its own; it needs a script to tell it what to do.
Sounds 'secure' enough to me. Seems like mature software. Maybe overkill (now I know it certainly was overkill) but let's just see how it works.
My remapping was simple enough: change the AWSD keys for the LEFT-UP-DOWN-RIGHT keys. Script syntax is simple enough, just used an example that comes with the install files. Works essentially as expected. Got an annoying pop up after playing the game for a bit from AutoHotKey saying "you've pressed mapped keys 600 times" or something like that. Which was only a little annoying, so I ignored it the first few times. The game I play is real time so getting a even a 5 second interruption while in a match would mean certain loss, so I decided to just disable the script and uninstall.
Lo and behold: when I stop the script, the keys continue to be remapped. Was there some background process running? Maybe. I rebooted only to find that on my Windows login screen my keys continue to be remapped. Huh? Did AHK mess with some registry bindings or something?
I do not know that much about how Windows works, but my vague recollection is that registry bindings is something is active once the OS is active. I search on the web for say 1 hour before I give up for the time being and I end up activating the script again in order to write normally. This works as expected and I literally forget about it until any time I have to reboot.
Honestly a minor annoyance, but due to the world changing very quickly I lately have very few precious minutes that I can actually sit down on my desktop, whereas I used to be able to spend hours on this type of computer issue in order to get to the bottom of it. In other words, my current solution felt good enough. But not anymore. I think something more serious and possibly nefarious may have occurred. I don't want to seem dramatic but I just discovered something else a few minutes ago.
I have a Linux installation on another drive and I just happened to want to load it up after my last Windows blue screen (have gotten a couple of those lately, literally 2 in the space of 2 days and this had maybe only ever happened once before, like 2 years ago, so I am a already concerned about a possible deeper issue). My firmware/bios has a password and guess what I found when I tried inputting it: the keys were still remapped.
At this point I am at a complete loss. I didn't even think this sort of thing was possible. Some OS level software caused a change that was able to be reflected on the bios? Did it affect the keyboard driver? A driver that both windows and the motherboard bios use?
What else have I tried or looked at:
Device Manager claims my Keyboard has 3 instances of "HID Keyboard device". Not entirely sure why it shows 3. Properties show it has 2 driver files: kbdclass.sys and kbdhid.sys, which I suppose are some standard drivers. Not sure how to proceed.
My keyboard is inland (cheapest i could find at microcenter) i am not sure why I cannot find the website for that company. Found some drivers on reddit but they are on some sysadmin's google drive. I will download that exe when i am desperate...
UPDATE
I 'solved' the issue bye getting another keyboard (an old IBM KB-0225) and everything is now in order. I tried disconnecting the Inland keyboard and reconnecting, but after reconnecting I was still experiencing the same issue.
I don't know if I should close this question as there is no longer an issue, but I would like to see if anyone has any other additional theory as to why some software/driver changed occurred inside a keyboard device. As far as I knew, these devices have not internal memory other than possibly some logic gates.
There must be a background process running.
to check that:
note : For windows 10
On your taskbar, click on the ^ button (skip this step if there is no such button)
right-click on the sign.
click on "exit"
If the above steps do not work, try keeping a watch all the time, to see if you notice something uncommon.
I have been using my antique pc with a bit of stress at times and full of gratefulness at other times, but starting from yesterday, my old pc began stressing me out, and, most importantly, I couldn't fix it just by following a few tutorials on the internet.
Yesterday, when I wanted to draft some emails on Gmail from MS Edge, which I have been using since it is considered the most RAM-friendly, it crashed, and the crash continued no matter how many times I refreshed the page or restarted the pc. It says the error code: Out of memory
Sure enough, opening the task manager tab, I saw that MS Edge was using about 3000000k or 300 Mb, and it also displayed roughly 90% of memory was being used when the Gmail tab is only open and no other activity was going on. For a different person, the result may seem obvious, but my pc has been working somewhat ok, at least it wouldn't crash for just opening a Gmail tab and drafting an email. Therefore, it is not a normal occurrence from my perspective.
Do you know what is the strangest thing? My PC's performance has gotten better; for example, while asking this question, nothing happened, and it is responding extremely quickly as if I am working on the latest laptop haha. Then, what happens when entering Gmail?
Ok, here are a few pictures that may be useful.
This just started happening for no good reason I can find.
If I launch the MSACCESS.EXE program, then open a database. The database opens within 1 second.
If I launch the same database by double-clicking on the .accdb file's icon. It takes about 40 seconds for the Access window to appear, and less than 1 second after that the database opens.
The database is local, and both Access and the DB are on an SSD. The system is an Asus Z97 motherboard, i7-4790K # 4MHz (not overclocked) with 32gb RAM and about 200gb of free hard disk space.
In both cases, performance after opening is excellent with no issues. It appears it's only the launching of MSACCESS.EXE by double-clicking a .accdb file that is affected. I double-checked the file association for .accdb and it points to the correct executable.
I captured some data with Performance Monitor during the 40-second pause. MSACCESS.EXE is using about 0.4% CPU, doing almost no disk I/O, and there's no network activity.
I've already tried "Compact and Repair" but that had no effect.
This just started happening, and now seems to be affecting Access on ALL .accdb files. They open instantly from within Access but take 40 seconds to open when double-clicked. I haven't installed any new software or Windows updates recently.
Curiously, if I change the .accdb extension to .accdr (runs the db in the client runtime instead of full Access) the database will launch instantly.
What could possibly be going on here? I've searched the web and found some posts having to do with databases on a network share, but that doesn't apply here.
For anyone else encountering this issue, it appears this bug has nothing to do with Access specifically.
I needed to shutdown the machine, and when I did so, Windows seemed to completely ignore multiple shutdown requests. As I was googling to troubleshoot, after about 10 minutes, the shutdown did finally start. It took another 10 minutes to shutdown.
After rebooting the slow launch problem no longer occurs, there's only about a 2 second delay, which I assume is just MSACCESS.EXE loading "cold".
So, the problem is most likely in Windows and not Access.
I spent ages looking for the answers to this on various sites but eventually cobbled together my own fix, so hopefully this saves others some time.
This worked for me and reduced the load time from circa 4 minutes - even just opening a blank accdb fle - to seconds... So 4 mins if double-clicking an accdb. Once MS Access open and using File | Open it was fast.
I had two instances of MS Access both on Windows Servers that can see the Internet but goes through a corporate proxy etc.
After getting some hints by Googling this issue I suspected that the 4 mins or so was some sort of timeout trying to access a site or sites (MS Office apps do this) and that eventually when the proxy returned a timeout then Access started responding again. It was quick on the 2nd open because it didn't redo this request.
Based on this, I tried to divert certain sites to 127.0.0.1 and turn off all the Internet options in Trust Centre | Privacy etc. Nothing worked.
Finally, I got the solution. In Windows Defender firewall I created a new Application rule for the MSACCESS.EXE. This was an outbound rule that blocked all Internet traffic. After this the first double-click was fast again. I assume with traffic totally blocked, whatever request is going out to sites, is immediately stopped and returns a "no internet" to Access, which then carries out executing, rather than waiting for the 3-4min timeout.
I have a computer-based test that takes several hours to complete.
However, the test is timed-out at some point, because my PC "goes to sleep in one way or another".
This is possibly related to the fact that the test consists of two processes which communicate with each other via port, so I'm suspecting that perhaps networking is disabled in some way (even if it's completely "local networking").
I have disabled both screen turn off and sleep in the Settings "page", under Power & Sleep.
Still no luck, the screen is locked with a password at some point, which I suspect causes the test to stop running in the background.
I even followed a procedure that I found on the web to disable screen-lock via Regedit in something like 18 steps (why on earth did this company figure out that this is a reasonable user experience).
Is there a solution to this problem?
Found a (very hacky) solution:
If you keep all windows minimized, then the screen doesn't get locked.
What a great operating system, by such a great company!!!