Sage 100

Customer has this issue: The message block title is Error Encountered, File 'y:\\V450\MAS90\MAS_SYSTEM\SY_LOCKFILE M4T' not found. Then another message block popped up ProvideX: File locking, Unlock region failure Likely Network/Hardware error. My initial diagnosis is that there's some problem with the connection on their network. I can't think of one of these that I've had where the issue hasn't been network related (though this error usually kicks off a good several hours of ""proving"" it to the IT staff). Anyone else have a different experience?

I don't think I've ever had a Unlock region failure that has NOT been network/hardware. That's the one error message I can rely on. But the first time I had one, the IT group ran something that banged from the pc to the network for most of a weekend before it failed and they could track it down.

This has always been hardware related for me. See if you can check the workstation event logs and see if there are any errors reported in them.

Same here.

Does anyone know if there is any kind of reasonably priced tool to run network hardware issues down? If they can't find anything wrong with the hardware, they may wish to check how their virus software is tuned and try turning off opportunistic locks.

I've suggested all of the above and I expect the typical ""prove it's not MAS90 causing the problem"". It's basically a no win finger pointing session where the customer claims it's all MAS90 and we claim that in our experience it is network related.

I have something similar but without the same smoking gun as your error message. When a specific user prints a report based upon Crystal Reports, some of the dollar amounts in the value column print as zero. However the totals shows the right amount. I used DFDM to confirm the data in the worktable is correct. When she re-runs the report, the bad value will show and another amount will change to 0. She has to run each report 4 to 8 times to get a good copy. It takes her a full day to produce Month-end reports. We have tied it down to a couple workstations but the client is convinced that it is a software issue, even after proving it works on the IT director's workstation with the same data from the same server.

Last week, client received unlock region failure, along with other errors. Also, came down to finger pointing. Their hard drive crashed yesterday.

@ClaudiaGallegos - YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And I am sure they had a good backup or at least mirrored drives..........

@ShawnSlavin Could swear we had some derivative of your issue here not too long ago. Can't remember if it was that zeroes were being printed or data omitted altogether. Sounds familiar though. Anyone remember?

@WayneSchulz I think you are right but I can't find it either. @ShawnSlavin I had this same issue awhile ago and I think it could have to do with spooling if I'm remembering correctly but not totally sure.

Were the Windows server logs checked?

Is client using Trend Micro Worry Free anti-virus by chance? While researching another issue, I came across posts that an un-patched Trend Micro causes file locking issues.

@WayneSchulz and @DianeRuth as a follow up. I rebuilt an old notebook pc we had just retired with XP and took it out this morning. Joined it to the domain, created a profile for the user, loaded MAS 200 and ran checks and a check register. The issue did not repeat on the replacement machine. Looked at the IT guy and asked if he needed any more proof that it was the users workstation. (Tried really hard to not sound smug. Not sure I pulled it off completely.) Whatever the issue is, it's tied to something on the workstation and it's up to their IT folks to resolve. The only other app she appears to be using is Office so there shouldn't be a cross application conflict. I know that the on-site IT guys are stretched really thin but I sometimes think they create as many problems as the resolve!

I don't mind IT so long as they work with you (about 25%) the other 75% proclaim it a MAS90 issue and it's up to you to prove them wrong. Now we suddenly have two jobs - and since we are usually hampered from making any changes we don't really do much on the IT side except a lot of free research. I've had some real bozos try to throw me under the bus with CC: to everyone on management. I think in almost all the cases it turned out to be an IT related issu.