We've installed our WC app on a customer site using the .NET handler, running under COM with 8 server instances enabled. If we start up and load COM servers, we'll see 8 instances the exe in the Task Manager, as expected. However, the customer reports that after the app has been running for a while, additional copies of the exe will show up. I saw this myself via a screen share - there were in fact 12 entries of the exe in TM. We unloaded the COM servers and those 8 instances went away, but the other 4 remained until we killed them manually. We checked back after doing some other maintenance on the site and there was one extra exe running (9 in total).

They say that it seems to be limited to 4 extra instances as they don't recall ever seen more than 12 total. Any idea what could be spawning the extra exes? We're quite sure nobody is launching them manually. We aren't aware of any negative impact on performance, but are a little concerned as to why this keeps happening.

--stein

Not sure - if you have hard IIS Worker process crashes you can end up with orphaned Web Connection processes. This means that something happens that forces the worker process to shut down without properly calling the release apis that Web Connection uses to clean up its own servers. You can check the Event Log to check for application pool crashes.

Also - ISAPI or .NET Module? ISAPI is more likely to lose connection to COM servers if you have a lot of server crashes where FoxPro crashes and COM servers have to restart. Due to the way the COM marshaling works, crashes leave behind some residual resources that when accumulated will make the COM subsystem unstable and unable to release servers. This problem primarily affected ISAPI because it uses thread Marshaling, as opposed to the .NET Module which pins the servers to fixed threads which is inherently more reliable.

+++ Rick ---

This was under .NET. I'll have them check the logs for evidence of app pool crashes.