How to clear or remove stranded Sage line 50 users

• Posted by miketeye on June 26, 2008
• 9 comments

I found very little information available online on the subject and so felt the need to write a few lines to save someone else the agony.

The problem occurs with Sage Line 50 using data files running off a mapped server drive. In such a setup, if a user on a workstation for whatever reason looses connection with the server, the users session (linked to the particular workstation ID) is kept open in the user session database file. This stranded user session then prevents access to major maintenance tasks and backups.

If the user wasn't updating any files at the time of disconnection, then it is possible to logon to any workstation as the sage user and re-connect to the stranded session, and thereby terminate it.  If however the user was updating files when the disconnect happened, then in most cases it is possible to logon to the specific workstation concerned (provided it is available and the workstation ID has not changed) and re-connect to the session.

Consider a scenario where for some reason, the workstation ID changes (due to domain migration or upgrade), or the workstation is de-commissioned and is no longer available. This was the situation I faced. The situation was triggered by Microsoft's WSUS system which pushes volumes of windows updates onto the Server and Workstations. After such an update rollout and reboot, some workstation IDs changed for Sage line 50 (I don't know why and would value any info on how sage deduces its workstation IDs) and I was unable to log back into a session in order to terminate it. I searched online for some options or fixes for the situation but found no way to do this. I then had to hunt through the Sage data files in the ACCDATA folder to find a data file holding the data. I tried a few without joy, and then finally with some stroke of ingenuity, I replaced the QUEUE.DTA file with a copy from a fresh sage install, fired up sage and the stranded user was gone!!

I definitely hope it saves someone the headache, especially when working with impatient users. 

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