Troubleshooting

This page deals with the solutions, or at least pointers, to problems that our customers have raised. Most, if not all of them, deal with issues relating to the ever-thickening walls of security that are built around each successive operating system patch and release.

EasyHL7 Toolkit

End of Segment character cannot be defined as a Linefeed (Hex 0A)

This isn't a legal character in this context. But, we did have a customer who (at least temporarily) needed to accept messages this way, so we fixed it in version 3.0 of the Toolkit.

EasyHL7 Listener and Router family

Unable to establish connection to Listening or Monitor Port

The most common reason for this problem is that there is a firewall blocking the ports that you have set up the Listener on. The steps you have to take to free the Listener ports will depend upon the firewall you are using.

If you are using the standard WinXP firewall then follow these steps:

  1. Go to the Control Panel and open up "Windows Firewall"
  2. Make sure you haven't checked the "Don't allow exceptions" checkbox as this will ignore any exceptions you have allowed.
  3. Click on the "Exceptions" tab and click on the "Add Port" button.
  4. Add both the Monitor and Listening TCP ports (use any name you like).

    5. The Listener ports should be enabled immediately

Complete configuration details for the new Windows Firewall can be found on the Microsoft TechNet web site.

MS Windows Server 2003 Users unable to establish local/remote connections

This problem appears to be restricted to certain Win2003 users. Check first that you have freed the appropriate ports (see section above). Version 3.0 fixes several issues in this area, please ensure that you are running the latest version of the application you are experiencing any problems with.

We have identified and fixed a new behaviour in Server 2003 as follows:

Problem: On Server 2003 machines with SP1 installed, a (winsock) call to bind a port with INADDR_ANY fails. The same call appears to work on other Operating Systems (including WinXP SP2).

Fix: INADDR_ANY has been replaced with a call to obtain the IP Address of the local machine. This is unlikely to cause further failures, but it does put the onus on the client to supply the correct address for the listener since it will no longer accept connections on all addresses assigned to the server. This fix was applied to all of our Listener/Router software in version 3.0.

New software security features in MS Windows Server 2003 (and, to a degree, XP SP2) can prevent programs such as our listener, router, monitor and simulator from running. The following Microsoft Support articles may be useful (all links open in a new window):

Data Execution Protection (DEP) was first introduced in Windows Server 2003 and XP SP2. Microsoft warns that certain applications "may offer a changed user experience", or more correctly, will stop working. If Data Execution Protection settings are the cause of the problem, then try the following steps to except the EasyHL7 applications:
  1. Right click on MyComputer and select Properties.
  2. Click on Advanced and select Performance and then select Settings.
  3. Select the radio button "Turn on DEP for all programs and services except the those I select".
  4. Check all three check boxes: HT_HL7Listener, HT_HL7Monitor, ListenerConfig
  5. Click OK twice to accept.

For more information about this issue, you can click on this link to reference the Microsoft knowledgebase article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352

Connection problems on IPv6 Networks

Some customers are now implementing IPv6 on their Servers and finding that some communication programs experienced problems. The only problem we are aware of lies in the Listener and Router versions prior to 2.3. The issue arose when trying to define a connection based upon a machine/node name. The work-around was simply to use an explicit IP address instead.

We believe that we have fixed IPv6 issues in the lates releases of the Router and Listener. We have tested on a Server 2003 machine straight out of the box, and everything worked correctly, what we have been unable to do is replicate all possible installation scenarios. We would be interested to hear from anyone with any experience - good or bad - of using the EasyHL7 Listeners and/or Routers on an IPv6 network.

EasyHL7 Router

We recently had an issue with the Router where Acknowledgments sent by another vendor's Listener were being rejected because they were missing the final segment delimiter (0x0D) on the MSA segment. Although this is non-standard we have altered the EasyHL7 Router so that it no longer rejects acknowledgements sent in this way. If you are not using the latest version of the EasyHL7 Router and you think that you may be experiencing this problem then please update your version of the Router from the Downloads section.