How do I find the culprit? Rogue processes

[totallyobjects]

I have a web connection package running and just recently it has started to play up. I have resolved most of the issues - mainly to do with the fact that I forgot to close a socket!

Anyway, things have been fine with the memory being maintained within a 3mb margin for sometimes hours on end with the processor activity - as shown by the task manager flicking between 0 to 1 - 2%. The total processor time grows at about 3 - 4 minutes an hour. All seems fairly normal. Then all of a sudden, the processor activity for the VAST program climbs to 50% and the processor usage time grows in real time. All web activity ceases so the customers can't get any response.

What I could do with knowing, if anyone can help, is how do I find out what is happening and what is taking the processor power. When I invoke the Debugger and look at the processes there, nothing seems to be much different from the startup situation.

Anyone have any thoughts how I can track down what is taking the power?

Thanks in advance.

David

[waynej]

Years ago one installation of our product was suddenly pegging the CPU. It turned out it was because we were taking a string that came into the system and sending #abtAsNumber to it. Try this for example:
'1E123456' abtAsNumber

But the question is how did we find it. Luckily the product was running as a Windows service. And it's very hard for a service to not notice a request to stop. We had code in the shutdown method to dump stacks of all processes to a file if a certain file was in place. When we got the stack we saw some innocent code down in #abtAsNumber on a stack but realized given the above string it essentially locks up the image.

[totallyobjects]

We have worked out a bit what is going on but still can't understand why or why it should suddenly be aproblem when ther system has been running in this form for 4 years.

It seems that the abtwsac.exe that manages the interaction with the use starts but then freezes. Hence, when we look at the Task manager, we see processor usage climb to 50% and then a list of abtwsac programs all running. The only way out is to kill VAST and to restart the program. This is happening sometimes up to 5 times a day.

I have thought about using ISAPPI but can't get that to work.

Any ideas?

david

[waynej]

It's pegging the CPU, running some code. You have to figure out what code it is running. So it's not a Windows Service, so my suggested trick can't be used?

[wembley]

I've just posted AbxProcessPeek to VAStGoodies -- it might help you find the culprit.