Very Computer

We have been dealing with this problem off and on now for couple of      
month and we are now getting more and more desperate as I ran out of  
options and advices to try out to rectify the problem.
We thought we solved this problem couple of time, but it kept resufacing.
So we would be most grateful if anyone could give us some lead way
as to what might be the problem/solution. It would also be great if you
could tell us if you have experienced the same problem or not. And if  
so, how you dealt or not dealt with it.

In our novell 2.15 LAN we have AREV3.0 running in about 20 workstations.
The problem that we are having is this... time to time, AREV3.0 would
just freeze up, and this happens throughout all the workstations that
are running or trying to run AREV3.0. If you are currently in AREV3.0
when the problem occurs, everything seem to freeze (for example,  
menus don't respond, windows freezes up, etc). And this happens
to all the workstations that are running AREV. If you are running
some other application, those workstation seem to be unaffected; even
if you are running AREV through Windows 3.1, when the AREV freezes you
can jump to another application without problems. Finally, if you are  
not in AREV when AREV freezes up and try to run AREV (or perhaps
because of the freeze you rebooted the computer and try to run
AREV again), AREV freezes right after all 6 dots appears and you get
the welcome message. (As an aside, one of the AREV tech once told me
to count how many dots I see before it freezes. 6 is the maximum number
of dots that you see when AREV is working normally).

To solve the problem, the easiest way we have found was to reboot the
fileserver. However, this is NOT becoming an acceptable solution since
it affects both AREV and non-AREV users. And the unexpected downtime
is starting to get noticed by the people higher-up.

Some of us are at the point of giving up and calling it quits with AREV
and totally move to another platform. The rest of us are still looking for
a possible solution.                                                    

If you have any inputs, please post or e-mail me. We will try all
suggestions and summize the solution that worked into this newsgroup for
the benefit of others. Also let us know if this problem has happen to you  
or not, since if it is a common problem, there is no sense in trying to
solve it along.

Much appreciative,
Scott K. Stephen

Since I posted this desparate message, I think a reply is forecoming
especially when the problem seem to have been resolved. And it was
resolved by ourselves after more testing and brain storming.

In essence, the problem was with the locking of a crucial system file
which AREV seem to lock during any/most transaction (we believe).
And for some reason, there comes a time when this system file is not
unlocked properly after the transaction. We don't believe this locking
problem was created by us since we only lock datafiles and they are
well separated from that of AREV system files.
We believe this is something that is prone to happen after long period
of continues use - which is exactly how we use it. Most of our PCs
runs AREV 24hrs a day, 7 days a week (ideally forever).
Following on this assumption, we retified the problem by making sure
that all locks are unlocked after the end of an execution, an UNLOCK ALL.
We also assumed that UNLOCK ALL also unlocks all locks made
by the system for its own use..... And this seemed to have resolved
our problem. We haven't experienced the same problem for three weeks
now since we added that single line of code. So I guess until it happens
again, we will move on to other things on our to-do list.

Sincerely,
Scott K. Stephen

P.S. You are more than welcome to correct us in anything that we have
     said above that was in error.