Sudden error DOS 32 on software running on shared network folders

Question

I have a small business, where I run a software on 4 PC's at same time.

The setup is this :

1. Software is installed on a PC that act as a server, and this folder is shared to other PC's on the network

2. Each station has a local copy of the software folder on C:, because otherwise they won't run ( it complains about wrong paths, or DOS error 3 ) and they run the program within the .exe inside the shared folder

It worked flawless before, but I tried to do this with Google Drive + shared folder for backup, didn't worked so I removed the Google Drive from the equation. Shared the folder again, and copied it to C: on stations but now only one PC can use the program at same time.

The error I get is DBFCDX/1006 DOS ERROR 32. Which from my research is a network share violation. It seems that the program is trying to open a file which is already opened on the other PC, but this has never been a problem before.

I've found with Process Explorer, that a system process PID 4 is using the files. I don't know why or how.

Any ideia of what I can do to fix that ? It could be forcing Windows to allow the files to be opened and read at same time by multiple users or anything that work.

All machines are Windows 7x64

Answer 1

“Shared the folder again, and copied it to C: on stations”. Could it be that you copied (and so replaced local) configuration files with that. On the server the configuration would be set to run standalone, while at the PC’s it was multi-user?

Answer 2

For your PID4 error check the antivirus or the Application Experience service. (check for reference there or there)

A tip for old software please do a mklink. (feature was added into windows 7 for mklink)

(if the software is in c:\software)

cd c:\    
mklink /d SOFTWARE \\server\share$

That way your user click on the folder in example c:\SOFTWARE and it will auto-redirect to the share without your software/user would know it.

For an example I use the same tip for an app that get medical data from a serial port, thus I'am sure the data is saved into the network