Dr Watson Access Violations

I have a business network NT 4.0 that runs a point of sale order entry software that posts my sales to Peachtree acctg. Also runs a wire service program for sending and recieving orders from other businesses that interfaces with the POS software. The other day we recieved an incoming order and a sale transaction while we were posting to Peachtree. The posting failed and now we get access violation errors from Dr Watson on the POS software and the wire transfer software. They work, and Peachtree and our credit card processing and everything else works, even the POS except for posting. (note: interface will not post if the databases in the POS system are in use) I tried to do an install over the POS software because that sometime fixes problems but I get the same access violation during the install. exception number c0000005

My support people had me print the drwtsn32.log and fax it to them, they said it was a hardware issue related to a failing sound card. We have never used the sound on the server, but I remove the card, with no effect.

Do I have a Hardware problem, Operating system problem or an application problem. What am I looking for?? Keeping in mind that the server has a PCI cards at add serial ports and runs external modems for the wire transfers. Could a failing modem or PCI card cause this. Or would I be better off looking at the actual software programs for a corrupt file (s) ?? I know how to print dr watson log but it makes no sense to me.

Please someone give me some direction. Thank You, John

 

Since this sounds like a business-critical situation for you, I'd suggest opening a support case with Microsoft. They can get specific details from your error logs and point you to the problem source, assuming it is hardware or OS as seems likely.

We have a person here who can do that sort of thing but he is unavailable for a bit so not soon enough to be much help to you.

 

Will this work???

I consulted with my POS tech people again. They feel the hard drive may not be reading properly all the time (it's 4 yrs old, stays on 24/7). They suggested, since we are in the process of replacing it with a new server using Windows 2000 server (they don't support 2003, issues they need to deal with internally) that we do a clean install of all programs on the new server and transfer just our data files from the old to the new. They feel 95% confident this will solve the problem. Any thoughts???? I need to solve the problem by month end so I can bill clients. The new server could be installed this weekend. New workstations also.
Thanks, John