NAV client not responding

Roelof

One of our customers is receiving errors when users are in NAV and at some point freezing up. They receive an error that says that the NAV Client Executable is not repsponding. The users are logged in on a Remote Desktop server, Windows 2008R2. The NAV executables are NAV2009R2 and the database is a NAV 2.00 database. It looks like it's a threading or network issue but I'm not sure.
Anyone else any ideas?

Thanks.

Dakkon

Wow those are two versions I wouldn't expect to see together. Is this a Native database, or are they 2.0 database objects running on Sql? It sounds like you are in very bad need of an upgrade, though at this point it would probably make more sense to do a rebuild. Also, how many simultaneous users are we talking about?

bbrown

First, I second the comments above.

What errors are you getting? Or is it just the "not responding"?

"Not Responding", of itself, is not an error. It can simply mean the client is waiting on a response from the server. It's not uncommon with a long running process. It tend to be more performance than error related.

Roelof

No, the error is a real error. It's not a NAV error but Windows error:

'Microsoft Dynamics NAV Classic Client
executable is not responding

Windows can try to restore the program. If you restore or close
the program, you might lose information.


- Try to restore the program
- Close the program
- Wait for the program to respond'

To comment on the version differences:
Yes, the customer is about to upgrade to NAV2013. The executables upgrade is a temporary solution. The database is a 2.00 database and is restored as a NAV2009R2 SQL database on SQL2008, on a Windows Server 2008R2. Users are logging in on a RDS-server. There is plenty of memory etc..

bbrown

That's what's know as an "Informational Message".

vaprog

Without having any experience with such a configuration, I don't think running a 2.0 application on SQL Server is a thing you should consider to do. Expect a lot of issues with blocking and deadlocks.

Your issues with the client not responding could be related to this, but could be anything else also.
I'd started to address this issue with monitoring in the SQL server.

Also, you might want to test with a client on a clean windows workstation with as little additional software installed as possible, and lockd down with policies and the like as litle as possible.

bbrown

I find this to be one of the most misunderstood messages presented by Windows. Particularly when dealing with client/server applications. Yes, it is a Windows message. Whether you call it an error, warning, or whatever is not relevant.

The message "Not Responding" does not refer to the interaction between the NAV Client and the NAV database. It refers to the interaction between the NAV Client (or any other application) and the local Windows O/S. Windows expects runnign applications to respond to user actions in a reasonable time. When an application does not respond, Windows flags it as "Not Responding". Whether the message indicates an actual problem that needs to be resolved, can depend on what the application was doing at the time.

If the application was basically idle, and the user was just moving from form to form. Or maybe doing some data entry. Then, yes. Likely something that should be investigated.

However, if the message is occurring during a long running NAV process, it may just be a case where the NAV client does not check for user actions as often as Windows would like. A good example of this is Adjust Cost. It's not uncommon to get this message, if you try to move the Dialog window while Adjust Cost is running. If you wait, and let Adjust Cost continue, the message goes away and things continue. Abort the client, cause you think it has failed, and you abort Adjust Cost. Rolling back all the database changes made.

David_Singleton

Run a SQL trace or code coverage and work out what is happening when Navision slows down. I agree with BBrown that this is most likely a performance issue. Very common with mismatched object/executable environments.