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JLink Problem, Fixed More or Less

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg87436] JLink Problem, Fixed More or Less
• From: Helen Read <hpr at together.net>
• Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 02:15:30 -0400 (EDT)

Several months ago I reported a problem with Jlink that has become 
rampant on University-owned and home computers since approximately 
December or January. Basically what happens is that some / most of the 
time when launching Mathematica, Mathematica will hang, and eventually 
pops up an error about failing to connect to Jlink. Usually you can 
ignore the message and go on, but sometimes worse things happen unless 
you restart Mathematica. We have also had problems with Mathematica 
hanging when trying to open up the Documentation Center (though I think 
the Documentation Center issue may be a bit better with the 6.0.2 release).

We never saw the Jlink problem until we began switching machines from 
Norton Antivirus to NOD32 in December/January, at which time the problem 
became rampant, even on quite speedy new machines. We were hightly 
suspicious that the problem was related to NOD32, but WRI Tech Support 
never was able to tell us what the issue was or how to fix it, and 
several people from WRI assured us that NOD32 was not the culprit.

Well finally, the whole thing had become so aggravating that we tried 
temporarily disabling NOD32 on a few test machines. What we found was 
that the problem stopped when NOD32 was disabled, and returned when 
NOD32 was turned  back on. We then tried adding the Mathematica 
installation directory to the NOD32 exclusions, which seems to fix the 
problem.

All's well that ends well I guess, and I suppose we should have trusted 
our own instincts about NOD32 and tested it ourselves far sooner than this.

-- 
Helen Read
University of Vermont