Offline Servers Should Be Removed from Clients' Service Table (236578)

IMPORTANT: This article contains information about modifying the registry. Before you modify the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you understand how to restore the registry if a problem occurs. For information about how to back up, restore, and edit the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

256986 Description of the Microsoft Windows Registry

SUMMARY

SNA Clients for Microsoft Windows NT versions 4.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and 4.0 Service Pack 2 (SP2), and SNA Clients for Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows 98 version 4.0 SP2 may suffer long delays when trying to acquire an SNA resource from the subdomain if one or more configured sponsor servers are offline.

When configured for remote access, the SNA Clients listed above have their sponsor SnaBase entries created with a flag that guarantees that they are never removed from the client's service table. This is to avoid problems if the sponsor connection is lost and later reopened.

If the SNA Client tries to get an SNA resource from a configured server that is currently not available for any reason, it must wait for all connection retries to time out before trying another server from its list.

MORE INFORMATION

Although this behavior is by design, there have been requests for an update to dynamically remove offline servers from the client's service table so that the client will not try to connect to the offline servers when looking for an SNA resource.

In addition to that update, a new registry value must be added on the SNA Client.

WARNING: If you use Registry Editor incorrectly, you may cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee that you can solve problems that result from using Registry Editor incorrectly. Use Registry Editor at your own risk.

Windows NT

Start Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe).
Locate the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Snabase\Parameters\
On the Edit menu, click Add Value, and then add the following registry value:
Value Name: DeleteNonActiveSponsors
Data Type: REG_SZ
Value: YES
Quit Registry Editor.

Windows 95 or Windows 98

Start Registry Editor (Regedit.exe).
Locate the following key in the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\SnaBase\Parameters\
On the Edit menu, click New, String Value, and then add the following registry value:
Value Name: DeleteNonActiveSponsors
Value: YES
Quit Registry Editor.

NOTE: The DeleteNonActiveSponsors registry value requires that you enable the Update sponsor servers list dynamically option on the SNA Client. This option is available in the SNA Client Configuration program.

Some other SNA Client settings may affect the delay to connect to an SNA resource. Please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

178126 SNA NT Clients Should not Fall Back to Named Pipes

This feature is available in the latest service pack for SNA Server version 4.0. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

215838 How to Obtain the Latest SNA Server Version 4.0 Service Pack

This feature was first included in SNA Server version 4.0 Service Pack 3.