by raceamerica » Wed Sep 12, 2018 11:12 am
As Windows OS advanced to Win7, then Win8, then Win10, additional security and virus checking have been added. Timing software tends to repeatedly send and receive data unlike normal PC applications like word processors or spreadsheets that manage data. The nature of a virus is to send/receive data from your PC and the added security of the latest Windows platforms is much more sensitive to virus activity.
The TrackSafety software is continuously polling the TSLs for status and confirming each TSL is online and displaying the correct flag. This continuous polling occurs behind the scenes even when no TSLs are changed. This is done to ensure the right flag is being displayed and report a TSL failure immediately to the tower. The more TSLs online, the more communications occur.
Windows is monitoring communications to the comm ports of the PC and sooner or later will incorrectly determine the TSL communications as a virus. Windows begins to reduce the amount of memory allocated to the TrackSafety program until the program can no longer operate and crashes with an unknown Windows error. The larger the number of TSLs online, the larger the amount of data comm, the sooner windows begins the memory allocation process, and the sooner the failure. Once Windows detects the program, it remembers and the time to take action gets shorter and shorter. A reboot causes Windows to start all over collecting data.
This issue was reported first by the customers with large installations of TSLs and was resolved with revision B.5 of the TrackSafety software. Usually the failure occurred in about 8 hours of continuous control of the TSLs and appeared to be when Windows collected enough data and took action to stop the program. Installations with fewer TSL online did not see the failure in 8 hours. In fact, half the number of TSLs online took twice as long to fail, once again Windows collected the same amount of data comm but it would take twice as long.
Revision B.5 addressed the new Windows security actions by changing the way data comm was handled by the PC. Windows no longer detects the high amount of data comm as a potential virus.