Windows client freeze and cannot restart without reboot (continued)

[joergn1970]

Hi,

Some time ago I posted a problem with the windows client sporadically freezing and needing a complete system reboot before working again: https://forum.nomachine.com/topic/windows-client-freeze-and-cannot-restart-without-reboot

I needed a while to check out the proposed potential solutions, because the problem happens quite randomly. Sometimes I can use it for hours or even days without problem and sometimes it happens after a short period of time. The result is that the problem is not gone in whatever proposed configuration combination of server and client I have tried. In the meantime I even had a Windows 10 update and multiple drivers were updated to latest versions on the client machine and a upgrade to Ubuntu 23.04 on the server. But no change in behavior.

You have closed the original post about the problem and marked it a solved. I guess this is happening automatically after a while. Sorry, but I needed some time to be sure that I try out the proposals and observe the behavior. The problem is not gone. I have a slight suspicion that using copy-paste across client and server window make is a little more likely to crash as described. I also observed that without decoding acceleration on the client it crashes faster. But both observations are hard to reproduce and might also be a coincidence.

To be honest I have a suspicion that security settings and malware protection on the client machine might interfere. It is a corporate machine and I therefore cannot just disable them. The server is my private home server. So my use case is to use NoMachine to gain access to my home server GUI from my work machine. I also use the Enterprise Client rather than the usual client to make sure I do not have a server running on the work machine. I furthermore use this through an SSH tunnel setup with forwarded ports. This means the client is configured to connect to a local port, which is forwarded through an SSH tunnel to the server machine. But a direct connection to the server in the LAN shows the same described behavior of sporadic crashes. So I assume that the use of an SSH tunnel is not the issue here.

Any more ideas?

[Tor]

Hi. In your old post you said “the remote window and the client application window are both frozen”. Do you mean that both the window showing the remote desktop, and the one listing the existing connections, are freezing?

[joergn1970]

I also replied to the mail I received about your question, but I can also repeat it here in case my mail answer did not reach anybody:

I tried it out and left both windows open. They both freeze/crash simultaneously. And no window of the client opens again after the crash. In Windows task manager I see processes of the client being started, but no window is opening on the client desktop. The server installation on the ubuntu system is however very stable and did never crash. In the meantime I upgraded Ubuntu to 23.04. All good on the server. Only issues on the Windows client.

In the meantime I also upgraded to the latest version 8.5.3 of NoMachine client and server. It looked good and stable for a while, but also the latest version did finally show the same symptoms. I guess I was just lucky for a while.

I would not even mind that it occasionally crashes. Just restarting the client would be ok. But it is annoying that it crashes in a way that only a complete reboot of the client machine is helping to recover.

[Britgirl]

Hi, can you update to the latest version and tell us if you still encounter the problem? We’ve still not managed to reproduce the issue.

Submit logs from the player side and we’ll take another look.

Be sure that the Don’t delete log files on exit checkbox is selected in UI -> Settings -> Player -> Security panel before launching the client to reproduce the problem. Do not close the client once problem has been reproduced.

Then collect logs manually: create a compressed archive of the .nx directory in the user’s home. On Windows the .nx folder is hidden. To find it, write the following in the address bar or the file browser:

%USERPROFILE%\.nx

Otherwise navigate through the computer folder till the user’s home and digit .nx in the navigation toolbar to reach it. Path can be similar to: C:/Users/nomachine/.nx

[joergn1970]

Hi,

I am still on 8.6.1 and used it for a while. I did not encounter the problem with that version. However there were also some windows updates in the meantime and I am not sure what exactly improved the situation. However, it appears that the situation has already improved or even got solved solved.

I am currently travelling, but I will try out the new versions next week when I am back. But already 8.6.1 seems to be good now. I cannot really be completely sure, because it was anyway a random problem that can only be reproduced by keeping sessions open for a long time. But I did not experience it since the last update and few windows updates.

[joergn1970]

I installed the latest version and was using it for a while. I must say I did not encounter the described problem for a while. I think since 8.6.1. it got better. There was also a major Windows update and several driver updates in the meantime. So am not sure what exactly introduced the solution. However the bottom line seems to be that the problem is gone.

Thanks for your help.

[Britgirl]

Hi, thanks for letting us know. The NoMachine version is now 8.8.1. If you re-encounter the problem, get in touch.

[joergn1970]

I am on version 8.8.1 now on server and client and the problem is back. I did not experience it for several weeks and now it happened two times in one hour.  Maybe I was just lucky all the time, because it used to happen quite randomly anyway.

[joergn1970]

Can it be that it has something to do with copy-paste from server machine to client ? I was using copy-paste of text quite a lot today and the problem appeared again and repeatedly. Before I was not using copy-paste and it was all quite stable.

[Tor]

Hi. We’ve no open issues about copy&paste causing application freezes, so I’m going to ask you some questions to better outline the problem and confirm it.
When you have this application freeze issue:
– Do you have more than one Player running, connected to multiple desktops?
– Is the main Player window, showing the list of machines, freezing as well?
– Open Task Manager and kill one NoMachine Player process at a time. Do the other Player’s start working correctly?
– When you can manage to start a new NoMachine Player, if you shutdown temporarily the NoMachine server do you see other processes running in Task Manager? How are they called? If you kill them, can you start correctly a new NoMachine Player?

Also, please send the file %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\NoMachine\var\log\nxtrace.log, if it does exist, to forum[at]nomachine[dot]com.
Thanks.

[joergn1970]

Hi,

Here are some answers:

– I only use one player. In fact it is only one and the same Windows 10 Machine connected to my Ubuntu based server.

– I usually do not keep the main player window open, but in the past I tried this out and the main player window is also freezing.

– After the freeze is happening, the player window does not update any more and the mouse icon changes to the “wait, I am doing something” animation, but it never recovers from that and no updates are done to the player window. I usually press the windows close button of the player window. This brings up a message if I want to close it and after that the process is also gone if I remember correctly. This looks like the usual way Windows is handling unresponsive processes with open windows.

If after this I try to restart the player, I can see player processes being created in the task manager, but no player window appears. Also no player main window. If I do this several times, there will be more player processes started, but still no window. Only after a complete reboot of the Windows machine that runs the player I can get it working again.

– The process I see is nxplayer.bin. Of course there are many other processes running, but I did not find another one that I can directly associate with NoMachine or which looks suspiciously involved in the problem. Do you have some examples of processes I should look for?

I am suspecting some corporate security policies might be interfering here, because the player machine is my work laptop. I am using NoMachine to access a private desktop hosted at my home server and display it on the work laptop. I want to reach a clean separation of private task from work tasks. But I did not really find any concrete indication of my suspicion.

The main reason why I suspect it has something to do with inter-machine copy-paste is that it is working stable unless I used copy-paste a few times. If I want to recreate the issue, I would start doing copy-paste of text from the server to the client repeatedly. And it has to be copy-paste between machines. If I copy-paste within the server desktop accessed through the player window, it is stable, but if I copy in the server desktop and paste in the client native desktop, it works as well, but after doing this a few times the freeze happens. It is still kind of random and sometimes takes a little longer than other times, but this is the closest correlation of user actions to triggering the issue that I could observe.

– In the log folder I have a nxdevice.log and an nxinstall.log but not nxtrace.log. Can I activate a trace log somewhere?

 

 

[joergn1970]

Small Update: After it happened again today I also observed the process nxrunner.com being left after the nxplayer froze and was removed. I removed the nxrunner process, as well, but all other symptoms stayed the same.

[Tor]

I’d like to send you a library that adds some checks in the routines handling the system clipboard, but I’d need to know if you use the 32 or 64 bits version of the software (x86 or x64). Please send an e-mail to forum[at]nomachine[dot]com and use the title of this post as subject, we’ll answer by sending a link to download the library.

[TheMachine]

Hi there,

I am currently evaluating NoMachine in a corporate environment and we are facing the exact same problem with the current (8.8.1) Enterprise Client (Win10+11) and Terminal Server (Ubuntu) on multiple computers.
As soon as the NoMachine client freezes, you have to log out and log in again or restart the computer.
Simply killing the NoMachine process has no effect, the client GUI does not open anymore.
Any ideas to stop the NoMachine client completely until a fix for this problem is implemented?

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[Britgirl]

Please follow the steps that Tor wrote here and report back.

Windows client freeze and cannot restart without reboot (continued)

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