rminkler Posted December 18, 2004 Report Share Posted December 18, 2004 I have a small network of approx. 13 computers, 4 of which are windows machines and the rest are macs. I am running Retrospect 6.0 server for macintosh computers and am having problems getting my windows machines running either 2000 or XP to consistantly connect with my server. When trying to access them from the server program, in one instance (during the same session) they are able to connect and be backed up, and then if I try to repeat the exact same process again (immediate back up for instance), the server returns an error (either -1028, -519, or -541). There are several kickers in this situaiton. First, sometimes even after recieving one of these three favorite errors, I can get the client to become responsive again just by trying to configure it (for instance). The second kicker is that one of my windows 2000 machines started out being intermitently responsive, was moved to a different location on the network, and now works more often then not. I can still get this machine to become unresponsive if I try hard enough, but typically there is an easy fix which I will get to (don't worry, I have tried moving all of these machines to different physical locations on the network and so far nothing has consistantly worked). Third, windows machines running either windows 98 or windows ME have absolutely NO problems connecting to the server and being backed up. I suppose I should explain how I test whether these machines are have "problems" or not. The way I test these clients from my Mac running retrospect is that I configure the client from the network window, look at its volumes, choose the "get info" from the file menu, close the network pain, and try the exact same thing from the backup clients window (which displays all the clients on the network in one pain reguardless of their operating system). This is always where my windows 2000 machines are likely to screw up. Even though I had forgotten them, gone back and logged in and was able to see their volumes in the network pain, trying to recieve the same information again just a few moments later is unsuccessful. Fourth, I have been able to get around this problem with the windows 2000 / Xp clients by manually stoping and restarting the retrospect client (start->run->retroclient -stop & start->run-> retroclient). This always allows me to successfully connect and view the clients volumes, or backup the client, or run a few other commands where the client and server are communicating. Then it all falls apart. It's like the client doesn't like to be asked a bunch of questions from the server. After a few moments of successful communication, it decides that it doesn't want to talk anymore. Now one thing I have noticed is that when the 2000 client stops communicating with the server, the client appears to be continuously sending something over the network. I only have been able to observe this by using ZoneAlarm personal firewall. It shows me that the client is currently accessing the internet and listening to port 497. Now I have yet to find port 497 open when using a port scanner from a computer on my network. It sees all the open ports for all the computers (pc's and macs) but 497 is always registered as closed. I have also installed retrospect 6.5 for windows (trial version) on my windows 2000 machine. It is able to comunicate fine with the other windows 2000 / XP machine (two operating systems for testing purposes). But, I noticed that the client is not connected in the information screen and I have to click refresh to get it to say that it is connected (and then starts a connetion counter for how long the client has been connected). Then if I switch from that pain to another, the client again becomes "not connected". When I click refresh, it then shows the client as being "connected" but the connection counter has been restarted. So just by moving from pain to pain, it appears the connection between the 6.5 server, and client was stopped and then restarted. SO in closing, the only differences between the windows client machines (that I can think of) are the file systems (98 and ME have fat 32 & 2000 and XP have NTFS) and of course the intricacies of the different operating systems. I was having these same problems running Retrospect server 4.2 from a power pc g3 (98 machine and ME worked fine, windows 2000 was intermitent). I only recently upgraded my version of the retrospect server to see if running it on os X would fix the problem. NOPE. The mistery continues. Dantz has had absolutely NO answers for me. I have spent at least 40 or 50 hours trying to fix this with them on and off the phone. Does anyone have any idea why this is happening??? -Ricker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rminkler Posted December 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2004 Ok I want to add some new data from my latest series of tests. I used the network utility in os X to scan the open ports of my problem client machines (windows 2000). When I did this initially, I found that port 497 was indeed open on both win2k machines. I messed around for a bit and tried to make the client fail (from the server), but was unable to. So then I went to my os 9 machine running retrospect server 5.2 and tried to make the clients fail from there. After a few trys, SUCCESS!!! One of them failed to connect. So I went back to my os X machine and ran the port scan....497 was nowhere in site! I went back to my troubled windows client machine and manually stoped and restarted retrospect from the run menu AND....Wahlah! After running a port scan, 497 shows up. As long as 497 showed up in the network utility, retrospect had no problems connecting to these clients from my os X machine running the latest version of 6 for mac. Any ideas why port 497 would suddenly close (no firewall)? -Ricker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted December 20, 2004 Report Share Posted December 20, 2004 Hi Had the windows machine gone to sleep sometime during your tests? Make sure you install the latest windows client version from the Dantz site. Thanks Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rminkler Posted December 21, 2004 Author Report Share Posted December 21, 2004 No, the windows machines are set to never go to sleep. The only item that turns off is the monitor after 20 min. of inactivity. I have the latest version of both the windows client and the dantz server software. Any more suggestions? Thanks... -Ricker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricwash Posted December 22, 2004 Report Share Posted December 22, 2004 This has been a major issue for my 200 clients for 3 years. I have seen discussion threads on this topic many times. It always comes down to finger pointing at the client machine, and I believe sits unresolved for most of us using Retrospect. I do not think it is the client machine that is the issue, but something in the Client software. I hope something resolves this soon. -ric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted December 28, 2004 Report Share Posted December 28, 2004 rminkler What version (6.x.xxx) of Retrospect client are you using on your XP/2000 machines? Thanks Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rminkler Posted January 4, 2005 Author Report Share Posted January 4, 2005 6.5.136 is the client version on all my windows machines. -Ricker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KarynM Posted January 5, 2005 Report Share Posted January 5, 2005 We have experienced the same problem for quite some time, also. We have reverted back to Windows Client version 6.0 and it works fine. It is something with the 6.5 client that causes the problem. Our troubles started when we upgraded the client to 6.5.132 and we had to back down to 6.0. Then when 6.5.136 was released, we tried it on a few computers and it looked good, so we upgraded all of them. After about a week, we noticed that many Windows clients were not backing up. Reconfiguring on the server resulted in communication errors. We are currently using 6.0. Unfortunately, Dantz was not able to provide any worthy information and had no solution. Karyn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pnord Posted January 12, 2005 Report Share Posted January 12, 2005 Why doesn't Retrospect complain about the compatibility issue when you configure the client? It senses the version, right? Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted January 13, 2005 Report Share Posted January 13, 2005 Hi Retrospect 6.0 for mac is compatible with the 6.5 and 6.0 Windows clients. nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricwash Posted January 13, 2005 Report Share Posted January 13, 2005 Since Taking KarynM's route of backinstalling to Retro 6.0 Client on Windows, all clients work 100%. 100%! We haven't had 100% for a very long time. This tells me that there is some flaw in the clients versions higher then 6.0. At least when using Retrospect Server on MacOSX. -ric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ricwash Posted February 17, 2005 Report Share Posted February 17, 2005 Update.....still going strong.... Just want to report that since moving to Retro Client v6.0, all my backup problems have disappeared. No Net Retries, no lost connections, no activator code conflicts. Backups are truly not a stressor for me anymore. Thanks karynM!! -ric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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