Very
occasionally, Mercury Systems may display a white screen or an error message
with ‘connect timeout’ somewhere in the error text when you try to start the
program. Usually, this happens following a restart of your server or
primary pc (the one holding the databases).
The
reason is straightforward: the Microsoft SQL Database Engine hasn’t
started up automatically following the machine restart. Mercury Systems
requires the SQL Engine to be running at all times in order to retrieve and
store data, and if the databases are not running, the program will hang or
display the timeout error.
Fortunately
the fix is straightforward too. Either:-
- Restart your server/primary pc again and the databases will start up correctly
OR:-
- On the server/primary pc only, click START, then RUN and type ‘services.msc’ in the run box (or if using Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows Server 2008 / 2011, type ‘services.msc’ in the search box immediately above START).
- When the Services utility is displayed, scroll down until you see “SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS)” (may also be called “SQL Server (SQLEXPRESS2008)” on your system).
- Highlight the line (single-click) and click ‘Start’ towards the left hand side of the utility.
- Watch for the word ‘Started’ to be displayed in the Status column of the highlighted line.
Mercury
Systems will now locate the databases and work correctly when it is opened.
If you
need to kill the hung program, either click ‘quit’ within the error message, or
use Task Manager to kill the Mercury Systems application (also shown as
MSysM.exe within the processes list).
