Help Installing Turbomass v 5.1 with PerkinElmer GC-MS

[jdlh199]

I'm trying to upgrade our GC-MS (PE Autosystem XL with Turbomass Gold MS) to use Turbomass software v5.1 with Windows XP to replace our very buggy v4.0 that currently uses windows NT. However we don't have any info on pre-installation settings such as server settings, FTP settings, ISS settings etc etc.

The installation manual refers to "ensure that all pre-installation tasks are done" prior to installing Turbomass. But we don't have a list of those pre-installation tasks. Since this is not really essential work I am not really keen on a service call/visit from PE, so thought I'd try here first!

We've tried just installing the software anyway and playing with XP's settings, but we keep getting the following error before Turbomass even starts:

"Runtime error! Program: C:/Turbomass/epcassystem/turbomassUI.exe. Abnormal program termination"

and

"External application not started correctly"

Is anybody out there using this software and/or system and can help with these pre-installation tasks?

[Reda HTDS]

I send you an email with the entire procedure for installation. If you have any problem plz contact me in the forum

[jdlh199]

Hi Reda,

Thanks very much for that document. This is exactly what I was looking for!

I will drop an update here once I've completed the installation!

Thanks again,

Jon

[jdlh199]

Hi Reda,

OK, so I started over and made sure I followed that document exactly and set up all the FTP settings etc as needed. However I am still getting this series of error messages while trying to start the program:

"Runtime error! Program: C:/Turbomass/epcassystem/turbomassUI.exe. Abnormal program termination"
then
"External application not started correctly"
then
"Runtime error! Program: C:/Turbomass/turbomass.exe. Abnormal program termination"
then
"External application not started correctly"

Any ideas?

[Reda HTDS]

Hi jdlh199

I think that is an account security problem or communication problem with instrument epcas board!!

Try to deinstall the software completly. Delete all Turbomass directories. Reboot the PC & install the software again.

To give you a better diagnostic, I need to know some details.

Does the PC shiped with the software or not (Dell GX270 or GX280 is required)? Is the PC connected to network or not & did it have a second network board? What about instrument's boot sequence bips?

Finnaly try to do this: use MSWordpad to open the file located in the following path:

C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

The hosts file should look something like this, but confirm that the list line contains the IP address and name of the target, “64.1.1.2 epcâ€

[jdlh199]

Thanks very much for the info. I have an IT guy coming over today to look at it, so I'll pass that info on and will let you know what happens!

Thanks again for your help, very grateful indeed!

[jdlh199]

Hi Reda,

OK we are slowly getting there. The problem seems to be that the GC-MS cannot connect to the FTP server on the PC. When installing the Turbomass software we get these errors during installation:



Then we turn on the GC-MS we get the initial set of beeps, the single beep at about 10 seconds, but we don't get the little song that tells us the GC-MS has successfully connected to the FTP server. We also cannot ping the instrument at 64.1.1.2

So this is a connection issue.

Any ideas?

Jon

[jdlh199]

OK we got the GC-MS and the PC talking. It now plays its little tune when turned on and I can ping it at 64.1.1.2

However I still cannot start the actual turbomass software. I'm still getting the run time errors mentioned in the first post.

Here's some Turbomass error logs:

-----------------------------------------------------------------
SORecord
Time: Wed Aug 02 15:39:31 2006
Class: pnw_client
Module: RPCRunTimeError
Type: RPC
Code: 1726
The remote procedure call failed.
RPC Binding Handle: ncalrpc:canvanbio1316[LRPC000007f4.00000001]
Interface: LCD(ProcessService)
Server: canvanbio1316
EORecord
-----------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------
SORecord
Time: Wed Aug 02 15:34:11 2006
Class: pnw_process_mgr
Module: create_process
Type: OS
Code: 2
The system cannot find the file specified.
Unable to create process: C:\TurboMass\acqclient.exe
EORecord
-----------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------------------
SORecord
Time: Wed Aug 02 15:34:10 2006
Class: pnw_lms_pak
Module: itoa
Type: Application
Code: 13039
License date has expired
EORecord
-----------------------------------------------------------------

[jdlh199]

OK here's what appears in the windows Application Event Viewer:

The description for Event ID ( 111 ) in Source ( lcdServiceTurboMass(5.1.0) ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: lcdServiceTurboMass(5.1.0).

[jdlh199]

So I took the software home and installed it on my home PC and it works fine. So most likely it's a hardware incompability issue. I will switch the PC, reinstall, and see if that works.

If anybody is interested, the earlier communication issues I was having were the result of the Turbomass software setting up a user account called 'Turbomass' during installation (which the GC-MS uses to connect to the PC to download the software etc through the FTP connection). The problem was due to the fact that during installation the software also creates a password (massspec), which does not fit our company's password minimum criteria (password length, characters etc.). So the communication issues were solved by removing the password restrictions on the PC's local security settings. This is a very strange feature of the Turbomass software. I'm sure many other companies/universities etc may have the same problem. Why set up this apparent 'secure' network connection?

[jdlh199]

For anyone who's interested, I switched PC's and reinstalled and the software now works with no problems.

There must be hardware compatibility issues between the two PC's. One was an AMD, the other an Intel. Maybe that was the problem??