Peter Gray's community posts

Hello Pam and Pauline.
I have had this behaviour on at least two of my Windows7 machines since upgrading the host to 7.1.6.0.  Having had a similar problem with an earlier version (can't remember which) and found it was an anti-virus issue, I checked the quarantine, and found rfusclient.exe there.  AV is Avast.  I submitted false positives, then restored the file and set an exception.  After that I could start the host, and then the viewer could connect to it.
One of the hosts I shut down each day; on startup next day the same problem again, but reporting as a different virus.  I don't have physical access to that machine right now, so I can't check to see if it happens again until Friday.  The other hosts have not been shut down and I can still connect to them, but I dare not upgrade to 7.1.7.0 until I get back and have physical access.
Bottom line, look to see if your AV has quarantined the file.
Hope that helps.
Peter.

Hi Conrad.

v7.1.5.0 fixed the "Host files not found!" problem above, but I found that Avast had quarnteened parts of the viewer.  That was easy to fix.

Trying to update the host on my test machine consistently failed due to Avast false positives (which I have not yet worked out how to get around).  Fortunately that machine is in the same room with me, so I can see what's happening.  Trying remote install failed to update, but left host v7.1.2.0 running.  Trying simple update appears to have stopped the host, or maybe uninstalled it; I have not yet checked on that.

I'll maybe wait a few days before trying further host updates, in the hope that false positives will have stopped.

v7.1.4.0 Viewer seemed to install OK on one W7 machine: It can see hosts (all still at v7.1.2.0), and can control at least one of them.

However, on trying to do a remote install of the host to a test machine, with Remote Utilities security, I got a fail message:-
***** Start of log *****
Date: 16/07/2022 19:51:44
Action: install/upgrade.
Checking files of the Host.
Host files not found!
This happened both when trying to install v7.1.4.8 host, and also later when trying to install v7.1.2.0 host.

I also tried remote installs from a different viewr which is still at v7.1.2.0..
Remote install of host v7.1.2.0 succeeded as usual.
Remote install of host v7.1.4.0 reported success, but I wa sthen unable to connect to that host.  Further inspection showd that the host v7.1.2.0 had been uninstalled, bit v7.1.4.0 has NOT been installed in its place

Manual re-install of v7.1.2.0 using the .exe installer on that machine fortunately worked

I now see that v7.1.5.0 has just been released.  I'll download that and see if these problems are also fixed and report back

Hi Pauline

Could you please clarify if you've sent the files to support@remoteutilities.com?

Hah, no, typo in address. Spelled support with only one p.
will resend at least some later this evening.
Peter

Hi Pauline.

In this case, could you please send us the contents of these events, so that I could forward it to our developers and ask for their input on the issue?

I have jussent you event logs from a total of seven different machines, all having at leas one of these events.
Peter

I found relevant events by searching for "Remote Utilities" (without the quotes!)  They turned up in pairs, not long after startup,

Hello John

I have occasional failures of the host tostart after reboot, see my post Host sometimes fails to start after boot-up  I see timeout errors in the windows event log.
Could it be that after a major update Windows has more to do on first reboot, and the host service times out?  Do you see the paired error messages I described?

Most of my systems are rather elderly and somewhat slow.  I have at least three where the host service does not always start after switch on or re-start.  All are Windows 7, and have host version 7.1.2.0 installed; viewers are also version 7.1.2.0.   One is the system which I mostly use as viewer, and I can see that the remote utilities icon in the notification area does not always appear on start up; then I manually start the host.  This is not so convenient when the host is remote, but I can sometimes use a competitor product to get in and start the host.

I've looked at host logs, which don't seem to have any relevant entries, though I do see some access violation exceptions there.

However, looking at the Widows event viewer, windows logs, system, and searching for "Remote Utilities", I find pairs of error entries: "A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Remote Utilities - Host service to connect." immediately followed by "The Remote Utilities - Host service failed to start due to the following error:
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion."

I can povide a sample host log, and it looks like I can extract a portion of the Windows log, if those would be helpful.

Hi Graham
I too can't ping id.remoteutilities.com from home; I get timeouts.
If instead i use tracert id.remoteutilities.com, that tells me the blocking happens after 15 network hops, well beyond my ISP.  The last several lines of the result are:-
 8    10 ms    10 ms    10 ms  be2869.ccr42.lon13.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.57
.161]
 9    78 ms    78 ms    78 ms  be2490.ccr42.jfk02.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.42
.85]
10    78 ms    78 ms    78 ms  be2262.rcr21.ewr03.atlas.cogentco.com [154.54.47
.122]
11    80 ms    79 ms    81 ms  te0-0-1-3.nr11.b017536-1.ewr03.atlas.cogentco.co
m [154.24.0.34]
12    76 ms    76 ms    76 ms  38.142.54.82
13    77 ms    77 ms    78 ms  edge-03-teb1.us.as19318.net [64.20.32.137]
14    77 ms    77 ms    78 ms  edge-05b-teb4.us.trouble-free.net [64.20.32.49]

15    91 ms    78 ms    85 ms  switch11n.trouble-free.net [173.225.96.35]
16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
17     *        *        *     Request timed out.
18     *        *        *     Request timed out.
19     *        *        *     Request timed out.
20  ^C
I cancelled with ctrl C after the 19th line.

Hi Pauline

Thank you for updating us on this.

Could you please let us know if you have both Host and Viewer updated to the latest version 7.1.2.0? Please make sure that there's no version mismatch between Host and Viewer as it might lead to performance issues or even some features not working.

Yes, both the Viewer and all the several Hosts  tried it with were at the latest version 7.1.2.0.  Note that the problem only occurs with the Viewer on Windows XP, not on Windows 7.

Peter.