Using their test program on a variety of PCs, the software vendor found that the problem was related to the Intel hyper-threading technology (my client has standardised on a version of the IBM ThinkCentre M50 which includes a single 3GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with HT technology). Identifying this allowed them to construct a test program which polled for input, timing out every few seconds and would reliably hang an NTVDM at a seemingly random time, but always within an hour. Occasionally, the input does not timeout and return control to the calling program – it seems that this is the root cause of the NTVDM hang. Normal actions for troubleshooting MS-DOS applications in Windows XP were not helping to resolve the issue, but the software vendor managed to narrow the issue down to FoxPro waiting for input. Only the application hangs – it is possible to terminate the NTVDM process and carry on working as normally. Windows XP did have service pack 2 applied, but the issue also occurs on service pack 1 PCs (I didn’t try the RTM version). Every now and then, the application will hang – seemingly randomly. My client has an MS-DOS (FoxPro 2.6a database) application running within an NTVDM on Windows XP. I’ve been working on an intriguing (and frustrating) issue for a few weeks now and a couple of days back we finally resolved the issue. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time.
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