Help Debugging frequent "Filemaker Not Responding" Errors

Questions
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1

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?

2

Does the FileMaker Server show disconnection in the server log?

3

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 ?

4

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?

5

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?

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6

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

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7

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.

8

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.

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9

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!

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10

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

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