Profiler unable to detect Frameworks loaded

preinsko

We installed Ants Profiler 2. 6 a couple of weeks ago; but ran into the issue where the profiler is unable to detect that the web application loaded the .Net Framework, after digging around in this forum I found mention of the TCP port 8087 and we realized we needed to open that port before we could proceed.

On Monday after finding out how to extend our trial date I was able to run the profiler successfully; but I only used the option to only profile .Net methods that have source code. However, this option does not provide any additional information than what I already know and it returned no analysis of our classes at all. I then tried the the custom filter and filtered out all the frameworks assemblies leaving just our own or so I thought.

After creating the new project nothing would work anymore. I was once again presented with the infamous "The web application <pagename>.aspx has not loaded the .Net Framework Please Check that myPage.aspx is an ASP.NET web application...." Well, this is the same login page, application and server so I am stumped. I have searched your forum and found that all messages about this problem ended in a private posting unless the answer was obvious. Disappointed I am posting this in the hopes of getting the profiler to once again work. Unfortunately your documentation is geared towards a desktop application so I was not able to get much help from it.

Troubleshooting:
I have rebooted the server twice, I ran file monitor looking for access denied issues and found none. I created a logs folder under the Profiler folder and the logs are written to; but have nothing helpful. I have checked the event logs both application and system looking to find if something in the background was causing the problem; but there are no related instances of an error or warning.
The problem we are addressing is high cpu utilization during high usage, we have already solved the main problem; but we were hoping your program would provide us with more under the hood data we don't know how to get.
Currently I can no longer run a profile for this application at all which seems strange after I was able to run the reports on Monday. Believe me nothing changed in the 15 minutes or so that it took to reconfigure the profiler for the other options.
Development Environment

The server is a Windows 2000 Server up to date with all Service Paks and most security patches.

This particular application uses Frameworks 1.1. We have not installed the service pak for 1.1 because we uncovered a problem in one of our other apps and need to reconcile that problem before updating.

While Visual Studio .Net is installed on this Server it is only used for desktop application development not for our web applications. Therefore we compile our assemblies using the command line compiler and a make file. Some of the assemblies have more than one page and all reference our utility object and our Error object.

Thanks in advance

Brian Donahue

Hello Pamela,

Sorry about this. The root cause is that when we profile ASP .NET 1.1, it's a fiddle to workaround some problems in IIS that requires us to se the profiling up for all applications being launched by the ASPNET user. This introduces many colourful problems, such as the fact that if you are logged in as the same user running ASPNET (as specified in the machine.config's processmodel), ANTS tries to profile everything including itself. Writing to the ASPNET user's registry also causes problems because of 1. security and roaming profiles and 2. trying to evaluate other profilers that use the same technique that effectively 'hijack' ANTS profiler when it tries to load the back-end component. DevPartner makes one like this.

There are a few suggestions in the KnowledgeBase forum. I think there are three branches of troubleshooting: 1. if you always waiting for connection in the window border in the lower-left, or 2. you have a connection and no results come back anyway, or 3. if the error pops up saying that there was an error co-creating the profiler.

I'll be the first to admit we have a low success rate at solving this. When ASP .NET 1.1 falls by the wayside, that will be a happy day for me!

preinsko

I went through the forum and found nothing of any help. After posting AND once I had the office / Lab all to myself I began the quest. Here is what I discovered.
1. Our application must have domain cookies in order to function. We have a single code base that serves four different kinds of customers on four different servers. Sometimes we must send the user from one site to another thus changing servers. That said you program continually using the default localhost to bring up any website.
2. I found that I could enter the url in the drop down list; but I continued to receive the alert (application isn't .net application .....).
3. I tried to add an alias to the lmhosts file with no joy per your kb.
4. I found that if I selected the site from the dropdown list and allowed ANTs to bring up the page I could then change the url in the browser and make the profiler work.
5. Finally, this is something you might want to add to your FAQ, I created a generic aspx page placed it in the root of the website and pointed the default document to that file. Within that file is nothing more than a metatag refresh which then takes me to the appropriate login page and the profiler works perfectly. It is a .net aspx page with the page directive and the essential html tags. This may solve some of the problems for other people as well.
6. I also got this to work with Terminal Services by saving the project and loading it instead of trying to create a new one.

At any rate the only other question I have relates to documentation. Does the paid version have better documentation. Given that all we do is enter the serial number I suspect it does not. Your documentation is geared to a desktop app and nothing really applies to a web app when I try to analyze the results. Are you working on somthing for the future?

Thanks

Tom Harris

Hi there,

we are starting work on an update to ANTS Profiler. We would like to improve the ASP.NET profiling area and add better error handling. Better documentation of profiling in that area is also much needed.

I can't give you any more details at this time.

Regards,

Tom Harris

Red Gate Software