IE crashes

[PaulLinscott]

I have two users for whom IE crashes when they enter the tasks tab in
the PWA.
This week we published several projects containing hundreds of tasks in
each project. 2 resources were able to enter their hours once and then
IE crashed on each further attempt (entering the tasks menu). No
changes to the users' PC configurations were made this week.
The crash happens regardless of the PC we logon using their userids. On
one
laptop, I got the message that IE crashed when running pigrid11.ocx.
This
morning, we installed Project Server 2003 SP1. After the installation,
we
were required to re-install the ActiveX components. IE still crashes.

They are not running the Google tool bar. Nor are they running pop up
blockers.

I manually deleted all project ActiveX controls from the Downloaded
Program File folder. I disabled all non-essential IE add ons. The
problems still exists.

The log files do not show any problems. The IE versions on the PCs are

6.0.2800 (Win2k SP4) and 6.0.2900.2180.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519 (Win XP
Pro
SP2). We also use Project Server 2003 MUI with SP1 for our Italian
employees.

Suggestions, ideas would be great!


thanks

Paul

 

[Victor]

One possibility is that you have some spyware on those computers.

Here is basically what I did:
1. Use some software to scan your computer for spyware. You can
download some for free if you don't have any (CounterSpy, Ad-Aware,
etc.).
2. Do a full scan on your computer and remove any spyware that it
recommends to remove.
3. Not sure about this one, but I have had to also do this: Unistall
any 3rd party toolbars such as the Google toolbar.
4. Reboot.

Victor

 

[PaulLinscott]

Thanks Victor. All add-ons were disabled. Problems still appeared. I
will give the spyware scan a try, however, I can not believe it will do
any good because the problem appears no matter where the person logs
onto.

cheers

Paul

 

[Victor]

The problem occurs no matter which machine they log onto? Sorry, I
missed that you stated that in your original posting.

Are these machines they have never logged into before? Maybe there is
already a problem on the machine they are trying. Do you have a
machine they can use that they have never logged into before? By this
I mean a brand new profile will be created for them the first time they
log onto the machine.

Are you by any chance using a windows roaming profile? By this I mean
the profile is stored on a network share somewhere and that profile is
used no matter which computer you log onto. Maybe the profile is
corrupt and that is causing the problems.

Just throwing out ideas.

Thanks,

Victor

 

[PaulLinscott]

We tried it out on 3 PCs of which the user had not previously logged on.
The same problem.

Yes we are using a roaming profile. We also thought that the profile
for the users in question are corrupt, but the administrator disputed
this as a possible cause. He thinks it is related to the project data.
We use the MUI pack for Italian and the project plans are bi-lingual
English and Italian.

I created a test project server and created the problem windows account
in the resource pool. I imported all projects that have been newly
created since the start of this problem and assigned him to all the
tasks that he was assigned to on the production server. If the Windows
profile is corrupt then the same problem must appear on the test server
(if my assumption is correct).
Do you know how to recreate or rebuild a Windows user profile?

I'll let you know of my findings after I finish with the test server.

ciao
Paul

 

[PaulLinscott]

Now I'm totally lost and out of options. I created the test project
server and installed the project plans that were published since the
start of the problem. We logged into the test server using the Windows
account and went to the task menu. No problem with IE. It appears that
the Windows profile is OK. I simply don't understand where the problem
is coming from.

Any ideas?

Paul

 

[Victor]

Windows automatically creates a user profile for you the first time you
log on to a machine and keeps adjusting it as you do things on the
machine.

Under Control Panel > Regional and Language Options, what do you have
selected as your standards and formats- English or Italian? This
setting is on the client computer and on the server.

You stated that your project plans are bi-lingual, but as far as I
know, your project server machine can only have one setting here. I do
not know exactly what effect this would have on Project Web Access, but
I would think there might be some sort of conflict if the client is set
up as Italian and the server is set up as English or vice versa. Maybe
not though. Just another thing to look into.

Victor

 

[PaulLinscott]

I'm not an expert in the Windows configuration, but I know there is a
possibility to have multple clients accessing the server using
different langauages. The server settings should not dictate or
influence the data in the DB. We installed the project Multilingual
User Interface (MUI). This add-on enables clients to view PWA in the
language of choice i.e. we installed the Italian MUI for our Italian
employees. In order to work with the Italian PWA, all the user needs to
do is switch IE language preference setting to Italian as the first
language Tools/Options/Language. After restarting IE, the PWA is in
Italian.
The plans are bilingual in the sense that we added a customized text
field to store the Italian translation task name. We have employees
that do not speak English - only Italian. We added this field in all
plans and made it available in the timesheet view. I initially thought
it was this field as well, so I removed the field from the timesheet
view. The problem still appeared.

I will start playing with the regional settings to see if this helps.

Do you know how to rebuild a user's profile? If the profile is corrupt,
then I could believe that this would be a possible cause of the
problem.

thx for your help and ideas!

Paul

 

[Victor]

I don't have any experience with the Multilingual User Interface so I
don't know if the regional settings will come into play here or not.
It has happened before with me when the server was set up as English
and a client computer was set up as Russian. We had problems logging
into Professional because of that. This sort of thing might not even
be applicable in your situation.

Windows automatically creates a user profile for you the first time you
log on to a machine and keeps adjusting it as you do things on the
machine. This is stored locally on the machine under Documents and
Settings. Since you are using roaming profiles, you will need to make
sure that it is not being used or you would need to start with a clean
slate on the roaming profile.

There is nothing (to my knowledge) that you really need to rebuild.
All you need to do is delete the old profile and then log in as the
user you want a new profile for and Windows will build a new profile
for you.

There are a couple of ways to delete the profile. One is to go to
properties of my computer. Go to the advanced tab and then click on
the Settings button in the User Profiles section. This is for Windows
XP. You will need to be logged in as Administrator in order to delete
the profile.

If you want, you can keep some aspects of the original profile
(Favorites or Desktop for example) and then copy those into the new
profile. For what you are trying to test though, I wouldn't keep any
aspect of the old (possibly corrupt) profile.

Thanks,

Victor

 

[PaulLinscott]

We no longer can say that the user's profile is to blame. We switched
off the roaming feature on the server for the user in question. We
deleted his account on his PC. We logged back into this PC. The system
created a default user profile. We logged into PWA from the PC to
determine if the problem disappeared. The problem is still there. Now
there are only 2 things left to try: 1) remove the MUI 2) start
deleting the projects one by one to see if the projects are causing the
problem.

Any ideas would be appreciated

cheers

Paul

 

[Victor]

Sorry, the profile thing didn't work out.

You got this to work on your test server for one particular user
correct? On the user that it doesn't work, is he set up any
differently in the resource pool than the user it does work for? Also
since it is a test server, have you considered deleting that user out
of the resource pool and then adding him back in and see if that
changes anything. I definitely wouldn't do this on the production
server since doing that would mess up any plans he is on. However
since it is a test server you can try all sorts of stuff.

For the user that the project did work for, was the MUI installed?

Thanks,

Victor

 

[PaulLinscott]

The test server works fine. We created a test user account in the
resource pool using his windows account. Both accounts (prod and test)
are identical except for the user name (same windows account). The
project plans we used were exactly the same as the production plans. We
assigned the new user to the same tasks that the production user is
assigned to.
The MUI is installed on both servers. I do not think the problem is
related to the MUI, but I did plan on removing the MUI just to be sure.
The last thing I want to do is start deleting projects - although it is
on my list of options as well.
When this problem first came up, we published 8 new projects shortly
before. The users added their actuals and then the problem showed up.
Worse case, we would need to re-input the actuals again after we
re-publish the projects. Steps to take when we delete the project plans
from the DB - delete the project plans, test the system, cleanup the
plans by deleting the actuals and then republishing the plans. Do you
know if we need to do anything else to the plans after we delete the
plans from the DB? The plans also have a baseline saved.

thx again

Paul

 

[Victor]

Ok, let me make sure I have my facts correct:
1. PWA crashes for User A when going to the Tasks tab. - Production
Environment
2. PWA does NOT crash for User A when going to the Tasks tab. - Test
Environment

Questions:
1. Were 1 and 2 attempted from the same client computer hitting
different Project Servers?
2. Can User A log in from any computer and hit the production
environment without it failing for him?
3. If someone else logs into the production environment from the
computer that does not work for User A does PWA fail for them?
4. If it doesn't, are they team members on the same projects?
5. Have you tried creating a test project plan in the production
environment with the same resources as one of the plans that you think
may be a problem? Can people (all resources assigned to the project)
access the project without any problems?

I am not sure I completely understand what you are planning on doing
pertaining to deleting the plans. Do you mean you are going to save a
local copy of the plan, clean up the actuals on the local copy, delete
the plan from the database and then reimport that plan back into
Project Server? Once you delete a plan from the DB, that is it. It
will be gone.

I know you tried doing the Spyware scans. Did you try more than one
scanner? The reason I ask is because maybe it is spyware and the one
you tried didn't catch the spyware. I have had the problem you
initially described quite a few times on various computers and it was
always a spyware issue. The spyware scanner I used was Lavasoft's
Ad-Aware.

Sorry, but I don't feel like I am helping you much anymore.

Thanks,

Victor

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Paul:

This has to be something in the production database. Do you see
corresponding errors in the application event log? Security log? Have you
made security tweaks inside Project Server lately? Have you examined the
resource records directly in the database to look for anomalies?

Further diagnostics is difficult through this media. It's a continuous
investigative effort.

 

[PaulLinscott]

Victor,

Yes, both 1 & 2 are correct. The same user can access the test server
without a problem. The problem comes with the prod server.

Answers to questions:

Q1 - yes, we tried to access both the test & prod server using the same
user on different PCs. Test is ok, prod crashes.

Q2 - No - all PCs produces the same result IE crashes

Q3 - No - only for User A. This indicates that it is related to the
user profile, projects he is assigned or permissions. We tested the
user profile yesterday by assigning him a default profile. We concluded
that it is not the profile. I assigned him admin rights to project, but
IE still crashes. The next thing was to delete the projects. This will
delete the tasks assigned to him and will tell us if the plans are at
fault.

Q4 - We determined that a user who is assgned to the same
projects/tasks and is in the same group (PM and team member), the
access works fine. If it was a permission problem, then this user
should also experience the same problem. I'm going to re-examine the
permissions and resource pool to see if I missed something.

Q5 - I thought about doing this, but I thought that it won't help
because I can not test User A with the new project - his IE crashes now
and I don't think it will change if I assign him to another project.
Some other users that are assigned to the same projects as User A do
not have this problem. 3 out of the 7 who are assigned to the same
project have this problem. User A is assigned to the PM group and team
member group, the other 2 are team members.

In order for me to determine if the plans are at fault, I want to save
the plans on the local PC and then delete the plans from the DB. I will
then test to see if User A can access the tasks screen. If he can then
it was the plans. If he can not then it is something else. If the plans
are not at fault then I need to clean up the plans in order for me to
import them back in (I think). Because I deleted the plans from the DB,
the actuals, baseline etc are strored in the local copy. I think I need
to do something to the plans before importing them into the DB i.e.
clean actuals, clear baseline etc.. My question was related to this
task. I'm not sure of exactly all the steps that I need to do (if any)
to get these plans back into the DB.

I will pass the spyware idea on to the administrator to see what he can
do. He has already scanned the computers and found nothing. We also used
a completely new PC with User A and the IE stilled crashes.

You have helped tremendously and I sincerly appreciate your input.

rgs

Paul

 

[PaulLinscott]

Gary,

I checked the logs from the start of the problem. Nothing out of the
ordinary. When IE crashes, point of the crash is either in the
pjgrid11.ocx or oleaut32.dll. I gave the user admin rights in project
server and on the OS to see if permission problems or lack there of is
causing the problem. Again, IE still crashes.
I did not look inside the DB directly. I wouldn't know where to begin.
Which table(s) contains the resource data?

ciao

Paul

 

[Victor]

You stated that User A works ok in the Test environment, but not in the
Production environment. I would agree with Gary that there has to be
something wrong with the Production database if both of these servers
were on the same domain and therefore used the same windows id. Also,
I am assuming the roaming profile was used for both environrments.

If that is the case, I would make a backup of your production project
server database and then save off copies of the project plans that you
feel are causing the problems. I would then delete the plans out of
the database. I am not sure what clean up you will need to do if you
determine every thing is working ok once you have deleted those plans
out of the database. It is just tough to say without looking at the
plans. However, to just import the plan back into the database you
don't really need to do anything. Normally you would make sure that
any custom fields you had in an .mpp file, you also have has Enterprise
Custom Fields or that local resources can match up to a resource in the
resource pool. However, you are obviously not going to have those
issues.

Another thought: This might be a stretch, but.... You stated that User
B can access the same project that User A cannot even though they are
in the same groups. Create a dummy user in the resource pool. Now go
to all the projects that User A is on and use the Replace functionality
and replace User A with the new dummy user. Once you have done all the
projects that User A is on, delete User A from the resource pool. By
using the replace functionality you won't lose any of the actual hours
that User A already put to the project. Also by using the dummy user,
you won't affect any of your other existing users.

Now add User A back to the resource pool and go to one of the projects
and use the replace functionality again. Once you have done this, see
if IE works for User A.

Thanks,

Victor

 

[PaulLinscott]

Excellent idea. If I replaced user A with user Z does that mean that
user Z will have all actuals that user A had/has? If yes then this
could be a good test if the plans are causing the problem. If, after
the replace, it turns out that the plans are not at fault then I could
replace user Z with user A again.

I looked in the DB tables, but I didn't see anything out of the
ordinary.

We also gave admin rights both on the OS level and on the project
server level to user A. The IE crash still happened.
We also ran another spyware apps on the PCs - in addition to the one we
have. Although we found and removed some adware, it did not fix the
problem. It did, however, wake the administrator up to problems he was
not aware of - thx

cheers
Paul

 

[PaulLinscott]

Victor,

I found the culprit that was causing the problem. I created a
customized field called schedule with formula and flags. I don't know
why, but the tasks menu (timesheet view) doesn't like the field. As
soon as I removed the field from the timesheet view, the timesheet view
appeared for the famous user A. Now I need to analyze exactly what is in
the field that causes it to crash IE for some users and not for others.
The exact same field is on the test server. Very strange.

In any case many thanks for your help and especially your ideas. They
really made this pain staking work go much easier.

cheers

Paul

 

[Victor]

Glad you found what was causing the problem. That is strange that the
same field is on the test server.

Let me know if you ever figure out what the problem is with that field.

Thanks,

Victor