Dear All,

This is with reference to abnormal behavior/state of 'Visual SourceSafe' that currently we are encountering following problems:

1) Initially all users connect to the VSS to their respective projects but during working, it suddenly hanged(either doing check in/check out, adding files, getting files, etc) and the system stuck to the idle state. In addition, users are unable to remove/stop the 'Visual SourceSafe' session from 'Task Manager'.

2)One of the major concern is regarding VSS speed as we are continuously encountering too slow response from VSS during check in/check out. It take about 5 seconds to check in a file of about 100-200 KB but currently it is taking about 15-30 minutes or get struck. Or sometimes users have to reboot their system to resolve the problem.
Due to improper shut down of the VSS, most user's face the problems like 'ss.ini removal', 'userid.log not found', 'specific file not found', 'file already open', etc.

3) Sometimes VSS remove data file from the project at a specific location and we have to first restore the backup and then has to place the missing file.

(Please refer to the attached file in this regard)

Following are the hardware specs on which our VSS server reside:

Dual Xeon processor 3.0
IBM Blade HS21
RAM: 4 GB
Storage SAN (fiber)
Sata Hard disk 600 GB (RAID 5)
OS: Windows standard 2003 with SP2 along with Microsoft updates

Currently, we have 'Analyzed' all VSS databases but still the problem resides.I will be really grateful if someone can help us and provide support to resolve this problem at earliest.

Thank you!


Sincerely,
Saqib Khan

Email: saqib.khan@netsolpk.com
Contact: + 92 333 46 38 747

What are your options to change to a better tool?!

Subversion for example comes with some excellent conversion options to take all VSS history.

I have seen various clients hit performance/size/reliability problems with VSS and they were much happier having switched.

Robert: We are already working on to change the version controlling tool like Team Foundation, Clearcase, etc. But currently not in a position to change the tool or working environment for all users.

Currently, we want to resolve this problem at earliest. It will be great if you can advice or suggest that what can be the origin of this problem(that we are facing) and its resolution.

Thanks!

We encountered the same problem:

VSS suddenly hanged(either doing check in/check out, adding files, getting files, etc) and the system stuck to the idle state. In addition, users are unable to remove/stop the 'Visual SourceSafe' session from 'Task Manager'.

We found that the problem was our antivirus TREND MICROS Office SCAN.
Trend Micro has released an upgrade on 23/04/2008 that cause this problem.

I hope that this information could help.

Thanks Sorvolo, We will definitely apply the said changes as mentioned by you as we are using the said anti virus software too.

Can you please confirm the upgraded release by Trend Micro, i.e. 23/04/2008 whereas its website mentioned about 23/03/2008. so please confirm the release 'month'. I had asked because our problem starts in between the third week of April.

Thank you again for helping us.

We encounter the problem with the Virus Scan Engine(32-bit) version 8.700.1004.
Now we have downgraded to version 8.550.1001 and everything work.