[Question] Pastel on a server with multiple applications running slow and shuts down frequently

[Andrew1981]

Was hopeing to ask Neville Bailey this Question. Working on a network with multipal users running various applications. They instaĺled pastel aswell thing is its extremely slow and shuts down frequently. Will the problem be solved if they use a standalone box with a decent spec eg.i7 4th gen and 8 gig ram and decated it solely for pastel?

And everyone has i7 quadcores but mine is an i3 due core. Will mines performance be worse,because it cant compete with the bigger machines?

And is an i3 dual core substandard to run pastel?

[Kevin Smith]

Pastel Partner is not an extremely resource intensive application. Pastel and PVSW workgroup (the back end database) are both 32 bit applications. They will only run on 1 processor core anyway. Your performance won't be degraded due to competition with other machines, but rather by the speed of your machine itself. Is the server you are referring to slow, and it shuts down frequently, or just the pastel processing side of things? What version of Pastel and PVSW are you running?

It is best to run pastel over a wired network as opposed to a wireless one. Ensure your network is running at 1Gbs, as opposed to 100mbs if possible (often sharing network points with IP phones or old switches can lead to slow network performance). Also ensure you anti-virus is not scanning network traffic / set exclusions for the pastel folders on the network.

What errors are you getting when Pastel shuts down frequently? Are all users getting the same error at the same time? If all users get the error at the same time, it could be related to your switches not having UPS protection and a power interruption causes connectivity failure. Are you getting "Error 3112/3116 - Corruption in open item file" or "Error 20 - record manager inactive". These both normally point to network failures. Do you get Error 20 after a time of inactivity? Check the power saving setting on your network card. If your system allows it to turn off to save power, this would break your link to the mapped drive. As soon as you completed the next line/entry in Pastel, you would get Error 20. Same if you computer powers down the hard drive or goes into sleep mode while you have pastel open. There are also PVSW adjustments that can be made to speed up performance - local caching, removing netbios and IPX/SPX protocols, timeouts, etc.

Please give us some feedback, so the forum can assist better.