Halloween weirdness with MSDChemstation

[James_Ball]

So, Happy Halloween. We have had more tricks here today than treats for certain.

Today I have had three systems that are running Windows 7 and MSD Chemstation that all had problems starting up. When first starting the software we got a message box simply stating "6890col.mdb" with and OK button on it.

I went to searching and could not find that file anywhere on the computer. I finally searched another system and found the file in the msdchem\driver folder so I copied it to the first system with problems and then when starting the software we got a similar error but for "catalog.mdb", so copied that file from the same place and tried again. This time it got further into the startup but died when loading the 6890 parameters. When looking into the error details it list the error in "msinsctl.exe" when it was calling "msvcr90.dll" . I tried replacing the dll file but that didn't work. I finally ended up using system restore to rollback the system a week and it started working.

The problem seems to be related to some kind of update, but according to the logs we didn't have any updates to Windows come through and they are supposed to be turned off on the computers to begin with. Doing a check when rolling back the system did show that Adobe Flash Player was the only program affected by the rollback. Not sure if that had something to do with it or not, but can't understand why the column database files would be missing on three systems because of a flash player update

This only happened after rebooting a system. Two were logged out and it happened after starting them up, the third was running all weekend and not having problems with chemstation but it did bug when uploading data into the LIMS so I rebooted it and then the problem appeared. The computer I copied the missing files from is still running and I am going to reboot it tomorrow and see what happens. This happened on one 5975 and two 5973 instruments, and all with Windows 7. We rebooted one running XP and it didn't have a problem.(Another reason I prefer XP )

Just wondering now if this problem is isolated to us, or if others are having similar problems. At least if you are I hope this will help. I have sent an email to our Agilent service tech and waiting to hear back if they have any answers.

[Consumer Products Guy]

Were you "in costume" ?

[Steve Reimer]

Could this be related to the Flash / Win10 exploit that Google announced?

http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/31/googl ... microsoft/

[James_Ball]

Were you "in costume" ?

Wasn't in costume, but by the time I left for the day I probably looked like Doc Brown

[James_Ball]

Could this be related to the Flash / Win10 exploit that Google announced?

http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/31/googl ... microsoft/

It seems to be either something in the program that handles dll files or the dll files themselves. The missing database files is what has me scratching my head the most. I don't know if they were always missing or something targeted just those files. Three systems with MSDChemstation and Windows 7 had the problem, one with the same combination seemed to be ok. All of the systems running WindowsXP seem to be ok, and the Windows 7 with Mass Hunter was ok. One instrument ran samples until Saturday and was logged off, and another was running samples into late Saturday afternoon. That last one also had the crosstable for the LIMS upload reset to defaults which makes it look like something was effecting database files. Doing a System Restore back to 10/22 fixed the problems, so at least it wasn't permanent.

The Agilent tech replied that this usually is caused by an update coming through, and they suggest turning off all updates if possible. Ours are supposed to be turned off at the server, but I think Flash has its own update procedure that you can't disable, so it could be the problem. Once when it updated on the computer that runs the IC it actually forced a reboot in the middle of a run that was going overnight. It got uninstalled from that one the next day. Unfortunately some manufacturers tie their help files or even operational software to Flash and that makes things difficult to manage.