Agilent ChemStation Running Slow

[SMinero]

Has anyone experienced ChemStation (G1701EA, E.02.02 SP2) running extremely slow between sample injections? For example, on a five minute run, it may take an additional 3-4 minutes for chemstation to finish acquiring data and perform the next sample injection. We have one NIC card installed, however the data is saved locally on the C:// drive.

[MichaelVW]

Just curious - if you take a snapshot, is the data displayed significantly behind the run timer?

[michellec]

Here is an idea: OS and programs can take much longer to respond if there is any delay on the network communication, which can be caused by many things. I would try the following:

1. power-cycle the LC and computer? Do you still have this problem?

2. Do you have Lab Advisor? If so, you may want to try interfacing the LCs with it. Is there any lag?

[Bigbear]

Could it be waiting for the GC to cool to ready? That is the rate limiting step for our 2 systems running E0202.

[James_Ball]

Has anyone experienced ChemStation (G1701EA, E.02.02 SP2) running extremely slow between sample injections? For example, on a five minute run, it may take an additional 3-4 minutes for chemstation to finish acquiring data and perform the next sample injection. We have one NIC card installed, however the data is saved locally on the C:// drive.

Is the network connection dedicated to the instrument or is it passing through the entire network of the building?

We always run two cards in the computer, one dedicated to the instrument and another to communicate with the server for uploads to the LIMS. If it is not dedicated and there is a lot of traffic on the network it could cause slower communications.

Are you running the data analysis as part of the run, or quantifying it by hand after? If you have Data Analysis checked on the start run screen then it will perform the data analysis portion of the method before it steps to the next sample. Not usually a problem on modern computers but back when we were running 386/486 computers it would take longer to quantify the data from a run than it did to cool the 5890 down from 230C to 35C.

[SMinero]

Thank you all for your responses. Unfortuantely, we do not have Lab Advisor and the snapshots do not display a lag.

That is an interesting idea about the two cards.. I will forward it to our more tech savvy individuals to see if we can at least try it out.

[Bigbear]

James how do you get the computer to recognize chemstation? Our IT section provided two computers for our E0202 systems. Each computer had 2 cards. I had trouble installing chemstation until I took one card out. I was told, to connect the instrument to the network through its hub/switch.

[ATAlR]

Check in windows taskmanager which process is giving you high cpu usage. I had problem with M$ Defender, after completing run and sending result to PDF printer, the process of windows defender went over 90% for few minutes.

[James_Ball]

James how do you get the computer to recognize chemstation? Our IT section provided two computers for our E0202 systems. Each computer had 2 cards. I had trouble installing chemstation until I took one card out. I was told, to connect the instrument to the network through its hub/switch.

The GC and MS are connected to a hub, which is connected to one of the network cards in the computer with MSDChemstation. The other card in the computer is connected to the lab server for uploads to LIMS. If it gives the error "The instrument is already in use by another chemstation" then you must go into the advanced tab on the networking screen and move the card with the instrument attached to the top of the list. We only had this problem with our ICP/MS units, I have not seen it so far with the GC/MS units.

We do this to keep the traffic from the instruments off of the lab network. Instead of having 7 GC/MS, 10 GC and 5 HPLC instruments trying to send data over the same network as everything else in the lab, we have each instrument on its own dedicated switch to the computer that runs it, and those computers have another network card that interfaces with the lab network. We use IP addresses such as 10.1.1.x for the lab and 10.10.10.x for the instruments so they don't cross talk through the computer to the lab network. As long as the instrument and its network card in the chemstation are on separate subnets it works fine.