Greetings all!
The past two days had been interesting for me, I was trying to troubleshoot a Maximizer installation on one of my remote Clients that was just freezing up, and so I thought I'd write and share what I had found, and hopefully get some additional insights on things... (by the way we are using Maximizer Enterprise 7)
The trouble was that the remote client could no longer run Maximizer: Every time he would run Maximizer, it would come up, show the splash screen, and then it would sit there doing nothing: Clicking anywhere on the screen and the entire screen would turn white, and the only way out would be to click the [x] box and click [End Now].
I had seen this problem before, and the only way at those times for me was to completely uninstall Maximizer, strip out everything from the registry and delete all the associated files and folders, reinstall and re-synchronize; a chore that is just a Royal pain in the neck to do especially with the numerous restarts needed. In this case this problem was worse: The client is our companys Main Sales Head, And he's in Boston, MA, whereas I'm in Redlands, CA. In the past I would have them ship the computer to me for the reinstall via FedEx next day, and I would turn it around and have it back to them the day after: All of our users were on dialup at the time and remote-control through it was frustratingly slow, not to mention that I was forced to do a manual resync of Maximizer since Maximizer 7's Maxexchange had a bad bug where it would disconnect after a big .ATT download over dialup (Every packet has two files: an .HDR and the .ATT: Some of my clients had 10 meg .ATT files after the initial refresh, and after downloading the .ATT file it would immediately drop connection: Upon trying to restart the exchange it would try to re-download the .ATT file again, as the .ATT file was never confirmed as being sent). Since we are a small company and the boss want to cut costs, next day shipping is now almost completely out of the question unless I tried other avenues. This time around, the client has broadband, and so I was able to remote-control that machine using VNC and troubleshoot the problem.
I look at the system: Pervasive workstation is running and is green. Maxfinder is running, and I'm able to pull up entries with it! Interesting. But when I launch Maximizer, it dies as described.
Proceeding with my troubleshooting, I upload to the computer (using TightVNC's built-in file transfer utility) Microsoft's Sysinternals Process Explorer (procexp.exe) which gives me a detailed tree-view of what processes are running. I launch procexp.exe, and then run Maximizer. On Process Explorer I see maxwin.exe, and under it is madata6.dat . And thats where it freezes.
I proceed to read the forums here and see if anyone has anything similar to the problem I am experiencing, but I cannot find any. I reinstall. Nothing. And so I proceed to troubleshoot further: Could it be a registry entry? I rename the registry entry from local user/multiactive software/maximizer to maximize, and rerun. It Still locks up.
I'm at the point now where I've already spent about 6 hours doing various troubleshooting bits: Activating the Log file, Reinstalling, renaming, replacing, removing. I'm frustrated. I try to uninstall completely, and Now it will not let me as it says the uninstaller file is corrupt.
I try something different: I uninstall pervasive: Remembering the steps involved, I uninstall pervasive SP4. That uninstalled just fine. I know that normally it would need to be restarted at this point despite the fact that it doesnt ask to, but I'm already frustrated so I go 'what the heck'. I try uninstalling the base pervasive engine. Windows cant find the uninstaller, and removes it from the list of uninstallable programs. Thats interesting, as normally nothing would happen until the restart.
I check the C:\ drive. the pervasive files are still there! I'm curious: I rerun the pervasive workstation, it shows up on the taskbar as green. I run Maxfinder. It pulls up someone! I run Maxmimzer: It opens and shows me a login window!!! I log in. I find my entry. I make a note. I synchronize. I go to the server here, I synchronize. I open Maximizer on my computer, I see his note. I respond to the note, synchronize, go to the client, synchronize, open Maximizer and search for the note. Sure enough, my modified note is there!!
Okay: So I have averted a bit of a disaster here... Now If I were using Pervasive as my backend here at the office, I'd be a bit more worried about corruption due to using different pervasive versions. But here in the main office we are using SQL as the backend, and so its only His system that is using Maximizer that is using an unpatched (but working) pervasive db engine, and when he syncs with us his data is converted to SQL.
The question I have is: What did they do between pervasive 2000 engine sp1 and pervasive 2000 engine sp4? Is it a critical change? Should I go ahead and rip my hair out and try getting pervasive engine SP4 working on the clients computer for the sake of consistency or is there any compelling technical reason to do so? It is working now as it is, and I'd Hate to have to mess it all up "just because".
Ray
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