Help Debugging frequent "Filemaker Not Responding" Errors

We have a a hosted Filemaker Solution that's been rock solid for me. I'm running a Mac.

Meanwhile one of my co-workers is constantly getting "Filemaker not responding" (daily), and it's super frustrating. I've NEVER seen the issue and I can't figure out what the problem is.

Here's the specs of me Me vs her:

  • M1 Mac (new)/Windows machine provided by school district. New but cheep.
  • Download Speedtest: 89Mbps down / 40Mbps down
  • Upload Speedtest: 16.75Mbps up / 2.78Mbps up
  • Ping Speedtest: 10ms / 12ms

She's currently working from home, but she told me she's had the same problem when working in the school. I can't verify that right now (COVID, the building is closed and has been closed for most of the past year).

It seems to me it could be a few things:

  • Is this a normal "windows thing"? Or a normal "cheep windows laptops" thing? Losing network connections?
  • Her internet might be inconsistent. Is there a way to monitor that so we know that's the problem? I would stop beating my head against this if we could confirm that her internet keeps going down.
  • Her Filemaker probably isn't up to date. Normally I'd fix that first, but with the district IT, if it's not a likely problem I don't want to spend 10 hours of phone calls and explanations and everything that goes with it for a simple request like this.
  • Likewise it could be something that the district installed on the Windows machines that's breaking it.

Thoughts on how to debug it and track this down?

Does the FileMaker Server show disconnection in the server log?

What OS runs on the Windows computer ? If it's Windows Home, FileMaker is not supported on Home.

Are you both running the same version of FMP/FMPA ? How are the files shared - this is very important ?

Site is hosted on FMPHost.com
Filemaker works, it just disconnects, and I doubt the district would be on a "home" version of Windows.
They're all 19, but possibly different subversions. I don't know if the server versions actually match up to desktop client versions...
I reached out about the Disconnect on the server log and will let you know what they reply, but they told me they didn't see anything, so I'm guessing not?

Could there be a network issue?
Like can you ping the server from that windows computer and see if the ping time varies over time?
And is general higher than yours?

1 Like

I have seen this behaviour when the Windows computer has turned on two different network connections like e.g. WLAN and wired LAN access, those randomly interfere/interact ...what ever
what helped was turning off the - almost always - slower WLAN at least for the time working remote on the FM Server

2 Likes

Thank you! I'm going to try to get the district to let me use one of the windows machines so I can see if I can troubleshoot it myself. This is helpful.

This is just we assuming it is a network issue.
But it could also be some other difference between MacOS and Windows, like different order of events and timings.

1 Like

had a client where the microwave in the kitchen between the router and the PC caused interference and disconnecting ..

well - it can really be anything between PC and Server - if only one PC on that home network then maybe a new user account for testing might help to exclude at least something with temp files on that user account as the issue.

good luck!

3 Likes

One thing that could be done is to look at Windows Events Log Files that may content useful information about the issue

1 Like