Problem:

A “CallNamedPipe failed” error appeared in the debug window of the Net Express IDE after executing an application using Net Express version 5.1.

This same application ran without any errors 24 hours earlier and the customer’s IT team had made some system changes since the last run.

After further testing it was determined that this same error occurred when running any program within the IDE including one of the example programs that is supplied with Net Express.

What could be the cause of this error?

Resolution

Using the Process Monitor, which is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows, can provide details to what might be causing the error. This utility can be downloaded from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645 and can be used to open and view a log file. Once setting the utility to monitor all activity associated with MFNET.EXE for a single execution of the COBOL program, a log file is produced. In this case, the log file produced by this utility, pointed to Symantec which had hooked itself into the Net Express IDE and had caused unknown system calls to be made.

By investigating the Symantec suites (Altiris) it was discovered that the antivirus program was corrupted on the machine and required a reinstall. Once the Symantec Suites were reinstalled, the error resolved and was no longer reported.