Too many processes cause problems?

[Lucvdv]

Hi.

I've got a sort-of-a-VPN service running on Win2000 server, that deals with
a number of remote sites. For each of those sites a virtual network
adapter is created on which a tunnel to a remote machine is opened.

The main service process starts one child process (always the same exe) for
each connection.

This worked fine up to about 30-35 sites/tunnels.
After it was increased to 40, this error started occurring in the event log
occasionally, always related to one or another service that was starting or
spawning a child process.

Application popup: svchost.exe - Application Error : The application
failed to initialize properly (0xc0000142). Click on OK to terminate the
application.

This wasn't the tunnel service: the error could occur for just about
anything, as long as it was either a service, or started by the task
scheduler.

Interactive applications never show the symptoms, they still work as
smoothly as before.

The application named in the event log message can be svchost, or any other
executable.



After further increasing the number of tunnels to 45 this error started
occurring at every boot, and the last few child processes of the tunnel
service aren't even being started anymore (only 42 or 43 tunnels are
opened).

It's not a memory problem: 1GB on board, about 250 MB in use.
The system is running on a 3.2 GHz

I increased the service start timeout (ServicesPipeTimeout at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control) from the default of
30,000 to 60,000 milliseconds, but it doesn't make any difference.


Does anyone have an idea what I could try next?

 

[Guest]

Might be worthwhile to review MS KB article 824422

 

[Lucvdv]

Might be worthwhile to review MS KB article 824422

Thanks. MSDE is running on that machine, so this is probably it.
I'll try it out on Monday.

 

[Lucvdv]

Thanks. MSDE is running on that machine, so this is probably it.
I'll try it out on Monday.

Beautiful: it works.