Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : msxml3.dll error - Any ideas?

[ecenica]

Hi,

Firstly, big hello to all of you. First time post and all that.

Hate to do this to you but I'm hoping that one of you may have come across the problem we are facing on our Windows 2003 Standard box.

When running a page which has XML script, the page hangs for a while then returns this error;


msxml3.dll error '800c0005'

The system cannot locate the resource specified.


We have searched high and low on the web for this and cannot find a fix that works. We know its not the code because it works on our local test server and judging by what we have seen on the web its most likely to do with the MS XML parser, although reloading this has not helped. The strange thing is that the code and server were working fine a few days ago.

Any ideas, feedback, sympathy, stress-relief tips etc are all greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Smurf

[TDMWeb]

Have you checked what versions of MSXML are inatalled? You can do this by opening Internet Explorer on your *server* desktop (not on your own PC) and pasting this URL in:

http://www.topxml.com/parsers/sniffer/default.asp

It will tell you what versions are installed.

To install the latest version (MSXML4 SP2) go to

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

if you actially need MSXML3 then it's

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

Have fun!

[ecenica]

Nice tool!

I have run it within our problem server and get the following;

Your Local System's MSXML Parsers:

(Tick) Microsoft.XMLDOM
(Tick) Msxml2.DOMDocument
(Tick) Msxml2.DOMDocument.2.6
(Tick) Msxml2.DOMDocument.3.0
(Tick) Msxml2.DOMDocument.4.0

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your Local System's MDAC:
(Tick) MDACVer.Version: 2.80.1022.0


This matches what I see on our local test server. Is this a typical configuration?

[TDMWeb]

That setup looks fine.

From a bit of googling, it appears that this error may arise due to things totally unconnected to MSXML! It could be you need to go back to the old programming standby of start with the simplest app and gradually add stuff until it breaks, to find exactly where the problem is.

[MatthewN]

Are all of your permissions set up correctly?

Edit... I do not think it is a perms problem. I changed my mind.

[ecenica]

TDMWeb, Stormhosts, thanks for your suggestion.

After spending all last night and this morning going through every possible line of code and server config we can think of, we think we have the answer.

The code returning the error is a domain WhoIs lookup script that checks all the main domain suffixes, including a handful of .uk domains.

We think the error is caused by Nominet (The UK registrar) putting a temporary block on our IP address due to our site making too many requests to their database in one go. Apparently, they only allow you to make one search / request every 5 seconds. If you do, they block your IP for 60 minutes, after which you can try again. Our script is currently making 6 requests to their database in one or two seconds. Removing the .uk lookups allowed the script to run again.

We're now looking at ways of adding in a 5 second pause between each search or simplifying the domain lookup script to search just one domain at a go.

Fun fun fun.....