Too many functions running at once?

[Bulzie]

mass storage device = Flash Drive?

[Gina Maylone]

Basically an external hard drive.

[ItsMe]

Hmmmm. Back in the day when these things first started coming out and were marketed as such, they incorporated firmware that would compress and decompress data. This allowed them to charge more for a smaller hard drive. It is a similar thing done with the SD form factor and is why not all SD readers are equal. FWIW.

[Bulzie]

"All are hard wired to the server. However it is not technically a "server" it is a mass storage device. Does this matter?"

I suspect the external HD device is your issue. Can you move the BE database to a more robust PC or server and see if that helps? If not then maybe it is time to rewrite the process for them and make sure each step works. Maybe the way they wrote the queries (you said it was an old DB) need to be updated and made more efficient to run faster etc. If it is an old database, maybe it has more data now to cycle through then it did before, etc.

[Gina Maylone]

"All are hard wired to the server. However it is not technically a "server" it is a mass storage device. Does this matter?"

I suspect the external HD device is your issue. Can you move the BE database to a more robust PC or server and see if that helps? If not then maybe it is time to rewrite the process for them and make sure each step works. Maybe the way they wrote the queries (you said it was an old DB) need to be updated and made more efficient to run faster etc. If it is an old database, maybe it has more data now to cycle through then it did before, etc.

I have emailed him to have him try this. I will let you know! Thanks!

[Gina Maylone]

A bit more information: his network storage device is a quad core 2.4 ghz processor, 2 gigs memory, lenox, full duplex gigabit ethernet connection, two solid state hard drives. So I don't think it is physically the problem.

[ItsMe]

A bit more information: his network storage device is a quad core 2.4 ghz processor, 2 gigs memory, lenox, full duplex gigabit ethernet connection, two solid state hard drives. So I don't think it is physically the problem.

Does not sound like it is contributing to the issue.

[orange]

No it doesn't--I agree.

I don't have a clear picture of the processing environment. More disturbing, I'm not sure the Poster has a clear understanding of the application and the processing environment. I think we're getting into too much detail surrounding "mass storage device".
For the backend, if Access, we're looking for a shared folder and an accdb with the data tables.

This seems symptomatic, but nothing isolated or detailed.

Yes it runs fine on my PC (no server involved, but split db). It can freeze at any time, CTRL-F and CTRL-Z have been a problem since the beginning. Intermitent freezing. But when they try and run the emails and printed reports all in a row, it definitely will freeze. I CAN make it happen on my machine if I really push it.

It seems that Gina (support person) doesn't use the same system/interface/connection as the users - so may not necessarily experience the problem described by users.

They use Windows 10, Access 2016 (subscription), split database, backend on local server. Kapersky AV.

I'm their support person, I log in remotely (Team Viewer). I am not in their office. From the beginning of my relationship with this company their system has been buggy after upgrading to Access 2013. WEIRD bugs. I've posted many here.

Is it 2010 and 2016 or what? Some combination?

[Bulzie]

Gina do you have to option to rewrite the program? If the issues are truly random as in can happen at different points in the process and to different users, then I still think it might be a resource issue, maybe not with the server BE but maybe their PCs, bandwidth connections, etc. Also it could be the data it is trying to return. As Orange said, we probably still need more info on the process on what is running(list out each step and how long each takes to run, how big is the data, BE database(Years of data, number of records, etc?).

I was reading the OP again, this part "that either email a report" might be something to look at. Does it happen alot when this part is running? Are they using their own Outlook software or an Exchange server to email?