Pspice - rpc server unavailable??

[Malcolm Reeves]

Hi,

I'm running Pspice 9.2.3 on XP home and doing a large Monte Carlo. At
some random point pspice comes up with RPC server unavailable. This
only happens after a couple of hours of Pspice. Not at any other time
and only with very long runs. As far as I can find RPC seems to have
something to do with DNS so why is Pspice locking up?

Any suggestions?

TIA

--

Malcolm Reeves BSc CEng MIEE MIRSE, Full Circuit Ltd, Chippenham, UK
([email protected], [email protected] or [email protected]).
Design Service for Analogue/Digital H/W & S/W Railway Signalling and Power
electronics. More details plus freeware, Win95/98 DUN and Pspice tips, see:

http://www.fullcircuit.com or http://www.fullcircuit.co.uk

NEW - Desktop ToDo/Reminder program (free)

 

[Jim Thompson]

Hi,

I'm running Pspice 9.2.3 on XP home and doing a large Monte Carlo. At
some random point pspice comes up with RPC server unavailable. This
only happens after a couple of hours of Pspice. Not at any other time
and only with very long runs. As far as I can find RPC seems to have
something to do with DNS so why is Pspice locking up?

Any suggestions?

TIA

Hmmmmm? Malcolm, Didn't you continue your support ?

There was a bug and a service release to fix it. (I ran into that a
lot... it was something to do with the .DAT size.)

...Jim Thompson

 

[Chaos Master]

Jim Thompson ([email protected]) said those last words:

Hmmmmm? Malcolm, Didn't you continue your support ?

There was a bug and a service release to fix it. (I ran into that a
lot... it was something to do with the .DAT size.)

This happened to me when I ran low on memory or disk space. PSpice 9.1 Student.

 

[Malcolm Reeves]

There was a bug and a service release to fix it. (I ran into that a
lot... it was something to do with the .DAT size.)

I don't think that is the cause. Transient runs have been a lot
bigger and I have reduced probe down to just storing a few nodes.
Anyway I have the latest web update for pspice 9 (I have 10 but I
don't want to change horses in the middle of job).

I'm sure I've done larger MC runs (but on simpler circuits) before I
upgraded to XP. I don't think 98 has rpc server.

This happened to me when I ran low on memory or disk space. PSpice 9.1 Student.

Don't think this is it either. AC analysis is small beer compared to
transients and I've done some big ones of those. PC is 1G ram,
pagefile is 2-4G and pagefile drive has 5.5G spare (note to self I
must clean that out). .dat file is store on drive with 20G free.


--

Malcolm Reeves BSc CEng MIEE MIRSE, Full Circuit Ltd, Chippenham, UK
([email protected], [email protected] or [email protected]).
Design Service for Analogue/Digital H/W & S/W Railway Signalling and Power
electronics. More details plus freeware, Win95/98 DUN and Pspice tips, see:

http://www.fullcircuit.com or http://www.fullcircuit.co.uk

NEW - Desktop ToDo/Reminder program (free)

 

[Charles Edmondson]

I don't think that is the cause. Transient runs have been a lot
bigger and I have reduced probe down to just storing a few nodes.
Anyway I have the latest web update for pspice 9 (I have 10 but I
don't want to change horses in the middle of job).

I'm sure I've done larger MC runs (but on simpler circuits) before I
upgraded to XP. I don't think 98 has rpc server.





Don't think this is it either. AC analysis is small beer compared to
transients and I've done some big ones of those. PC is 1G ram,
pagefile is 2-4G and pagefile drive has 5.5G spare (note to self I
must clean that out). .dat file is store on drive with 20G free.

Hi Malcolm,
IIRC, 9.2.3 only allowed for 2Gig of a .dat file. Only with 10.0/15.0
did they increase that to be somewhat unlimited. Also, RPC errors means
that the software is losing communication between the COM components.
Could mean that the file size is too big (i.e. over 2G) or some other
error. Also, how many runs are you trying to do? Seems there was a
limit in there on how many, but don't remember what that limit was.
That has also been expanded in the later versions.

 

[Malcolm Reeves]

Hi Malcolm,
IIRC, 9.2.3 only allowed for 2Gig of a .dat file. Only with 10.0/15.0
did they increase that to be somewhat unlimited. Also, RPC errors means
that the software is losing communication between the COM components.
Could mean that the file size is too big (i.e. over 2G) or some other
error. Also, how many runs are you trying to do? Seems there was a
limit in there on how many, but don't remember what that limit was.
That has also been expanded in the later versions.

There used to be a MC limit but that was removed. I'm sure I have
done large runs on 9 (I'm emails that hint at that). Last crash was
at 1900 runs the one before that was at 1050. Probing more nodes
seems to crash earlier.

I've cut the probe down and the latest crash was with the .dat at 35M
(previous was at 18M). The probe setting seems to make a difference
to how far it goes or perhaps it just runs faster and crashes at the
same time. I've also cut down the reporting to .out which now is only
1k

I installed the latest DirectX fix (to do with rpc overflow) and that
made it much worse so I've taken that out. I'm wondering if the
problem might be the rpc security fixes. According to my patch
history I have installed a couple but I can't find these on Add/Remove
programs to try it without.

I think it might be something to do with the hardware lock. I guess
pspice accesses this from time to time when doing a long run. I have
got the diagnostic tool from Aladdin but now just what this tells me.
I've let it install the latest drivers (to no effect :-() and turned
up the timeouts. AFAIR the lock is a hasp from Aladdin, yes?


--

Malcolm Reeves BSc CEng MIEE MIRSE, Full Circuit Ltd, Chippenham, UK
([email protected], [email protected] or [email protected]).
Design Service for Analogue/Digital H/W & S/W Railway Signalling and Power
electronics. More details plus freeware, Win95/98 DUN and Pspice tips, see:

http://www.fullcircuit.com or http://www.fullcircuit.co.uk

NEW - Desktop ToDo/Reminder program (free)

 

[Malcolm Reeves]

UPDATE:

I tried a re-install of 9.2 - no difference. So I went the whole hog
and removed 9.2 and installed 10 + SP1.1 . And IT STILL crashes! Arh!
The crash is always with simsvr in psp_ppo1.dll. The OrCAD latest
patch has been applied as well. And I've scanned C: and there is only
one psp_ppo1.dll

This is making no sense at all. The analysis is crashing now at run
25! Earlier I ran a longer transient sim with no problems. It is
only the multi runs of MC that seem to be problematic.


--

Malcolm Reeves BSc CEng MIEE MIRSE, Full Circuit Ltd, Chippenham, UK
([email protected], [email protected] or [email protected]).
Design Service for Analogue/Digital H/W & S/W Railway Signalling and Power
electronics. More details plus freeware, Win95/98 DUN and Pspice tips, see:

http://www.fullcircuit.com or http://www.fullcircuit.co.uk

NEW - Desktop ToDo/Reminder program (free)

 

[Malcolm Reeves]

UPDATE:

I tried a re-install of 9.2 - no difference. So I went the whole hog
and removed 9.2 and installed 10 + SP1.1 . And IT STILL crashes! Arh!
The crash is always with simsvr in psp_ppo1.dll. The OrCAD latest
patch has been applied as well. And I've scanned C: and there is only
one psp_ppo1.dll

This is making no sense at all. The analysis is crashing now at run
25! Earlier I ran a longer transient sim with no problems. It is
only the multi runs of MC that seem to be problematic.

MORE:

I'm convinced that an XP update has broken pspice. The fault is
always in the same module, same dll. I've tried an old version sch
and get the same fail (one reason I prefer schematics to capture, you
get lots of old versions to go back to). The old sch is different so
this rules out a corrupt sch file. In the sch the MC was set to 999 I
didn't change this, just enabled MC. Hence I know I ran with this
figure before and got a result. Now it is broken.

Is there anyone who has
XP home with all the latest updates
pspice 9.2 or 10
and who has done a large MC and got it work?

Or XP pro and similar?

I think it is the XP patches since a lot of these are to do with rpc.
It could be some new software I have installed, like wintabs or
PC-Cillin upgrade or Nero upgrade, but even without these running it
still crashes so I can't see these being the problem.


--

Malcolm Reeves BSc CEng MIEE MIRSE, Full Circuit Ltd, Chippenham, UK
([email protected], [email protected] or [email protected]).
Design Service for Analogue/Digital H/W & S/W Railway Signalling and Power
electronics. More details plus freeware, Win95/98 DUN and Pspice tips, see:

http://www.fullcircuit.com or http://www.fullcircuit.co.uk

NEW - Desktop ToDo/Reminder program (free)

 

[Jim Thompson]

MORE:

I'm convinced that an XP update has broken pspice. The fault is
always in the same module, same dll. I've tried an old version sch
and get the same fail (one reason I prefer schematics to capture, you
get lots of old versions to go back to). The old sch is different so
this rules out a corrupt sch file. In the sch the MC was set to 999 I
didn't change this, just enabled MC. Hence I know I ran with this
figure before and got a result. Now it is broken.

Is there anyone who has
XP home with all the latest updates
pspice 9.2 or 10
and who has done a large MC and got it work?

Or XP pro and similar?

I think it is the XP patches since a lot of these are to do with rpc.
It could be some new software I have installed, like wintabs or
PC-Cillin upgrade or Nero upgrade, but even without these running it
still crashes so I can't see these being the problem.

I had uneasy vibes about XP, so I stopped at Win2K,SP3... SP4 does
weirdnesses with PSpice.

I've recently take to buying machines without OS and then install
Win2K on them.

...Jim Thompson

 

[Malcolm Reeves]

I had uneasy vibes about XP, so I stopped at Win2K,SP3... SP4 does
weirdnesses with PSpice.

What sort of weirdnesses? I suspect that a MC run might look like a
buffer overflow attempt i.e. repeated similar calls. Or of course
perhaps there is a previously undetected memory leak in simsvr that
now triggers the buffer overflow protection.

Malcolm
--

Malcolm Reeves BSc CEng MIEE MIRSE, Full Circuit Ltd, Chippenham, UK
([email protected], [email protected] or [email protected]).
Design Service for Analogue/Digital H/W & S/W Railway Signalling and Power
electronics. More details plus freeware, Win95/98 DUN and Pspice tips, see:

http://www.fullcircuit.com or http://www.fullcircuit.co.uk

NEW - Desktop ToDo/Reminder program (free)

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Sun, 20 Jun 2004 07:36:23 -0700, Jim Thompson
[snip]

I had uneasy vibes about XP, so I stopped at Win2K,SP3... SP4 does
weirdnesses with PSpice.

What sort of weirdnesses? I suspect that a MC run might look like a
buffer overflow attempt i.e. repeated similar calls. Or of course
perhaps there is a previously undetected memory leak in simsvr that
now triggers the buffer overflow protection.

Malcolm

(1) Sometimes PSpice.exe wouldn't start.
(2) I'd get lock-ups that weren't cured by killing PSpice.exe thru
Taskmanager... had to reboot to kill whatever was blocking.
(3) Probe would sometimes hang.

...Jim Thompson

 

[Chaos Master]

Malcolm Reeves ([email protected]) said those last words:

Is there anyone who has
XP home with all the latest updates
pspice 9.2 or 10
and who has done a large MC and got it work?

Or XP pro and similar?

I think it is the XP patches since a lot of these are to do with rpc.
It could be some new software I have installed, like wintabs or
PC-Cillin upgrade or Nero upgrade, but even without these running it
still crashes so I can't see these being the problem.

Isn't this RPC the same RPC stuff that the Blaster virus (ab)used to attack?
If yes, then probably the Win XP patch may have fixed a security hole, but
broken PSpice.

But since I don't use XP nor PSpice, I can't tell more.


[]s

 

[Malcolm Reeves]

Isn't this RPC the same RPC stuff that the Blaster virus (ab)used to attack?
If yes, then probably the Win XP patch may have fixed a security hole, but
broken PSpice.

Exactly right. I've installed on a Win98se and the MC ran to
completion so there is nothing wrong with the simulation (not that it
was that sort of error). I'll try setting simsvr to run in Win2k
compatibility mode to see if that helps. This will be an overnight
run so we'll see tomorrow if this helps.


--

Malcolm Reeves BSc CEng MIEE MIRSE, Full Circuit Ltd, Chippenham, UK
([email protected], [email protected] or [email protected]).
Design Service for Analogue/Digital H/W & S/W Railway Signalling and Power
electronics. More details plus freeware, Win95/98 DUN and Pspice tips, see:

http://www.fullcircuit.com or http://www.fullcircuit.co.uk

NEW - Desktop ToDo/Reminder program (free)