--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "rathfelderma" <martin@...>
wrote:

>
> I am a fairly naive user of a Firebird 1.5 application which runs on
> a Windows 2000 server.
>
> Our application frequently - several times a week - stops working.
> This seems to relate in some way to the Windows update procedure,
> which happens in the middle of the night. We often turn up in the
> morning to find our application will not start, but this rarely
> happens during the day.
>
> We get a message:
> Error opening database I/O error for file "aims"
> Error while trying to open file The system cannot find the file
> specified.
>
> We have the location of the file specified in the aliases.conf file.
> The Firebird Control centre can see our file.
> Our application is called AIMS - see http://www.lasa.org.uk/aims/
> index.shtml I have talked to the vendors, who are like us, a small
> charity, but they are not in a position to offer us much assistance.
>
> We can get it to start again by stopping the Firebird service and
> waiting - for an indeterminate length of time - and then it will start
> again. Rebooting the server does not seem to have much effect.
>
> We use Firebird Superserver 1.5.1 on a Windows 2000 server
>
> As far as I can see Windows is confused about whether Firebird is
> running or not. We have been running the Firebird Guardian service,
> but I see that the Quick Start manual says that this is not necessary,
> and when I removed Firebird and reinstalled it we lost the Guardian
> applet. However now I have installed the Firebird Control Centre I
> find that the Windows services and the control centre disagree about
> whether Firebird is running. And the Control Centre does not seem to
> be able to start the Firebird service.

This doesn't sound to me to be a windows update problem. Why not
disable automatic updates for a few days and see if your problem is
solved?

Have you installed classic or superserver?

I have seen that under win2003 server the control panel applet is
unreliable, have never observed it under win2k server though. This may
be because I head straight to the services.msc to start / stop the
service rather than play with a control panel driven on off toggle.

Are you sure there is no other application (virus scanner / backup
etc) that may be placing a file lock on the fdb file?

Adam