How to detect mutual exclusion objects with the Mutex Checker utility.

Article: 100038252
Last Published: 2021-03-23
Ratings: 2 0
Product(s): Enterprise Vault

Description

Mutex is short for mutual exclusion object.  In computer programming, a mutex is a program object that allows multiple program threads to share a resource one thread at a time.  The resource could be a file for example.  When the mutex is created it is a assigned a unique name.  If a thread wants to use the resource it must first lock the mutex so that other threads do not access it while being used.

A mutant mutex occurs when the thread/process acquires a mutex but then fails or terminates abnormally and never had the opportunity to release the mutex.  When this occurs other processes cannot access the resource and over time this will cause many different symptoms as things get worse.  There are tools online that can try to release these resources but one sure way is to reboot the server.

Enterprise Vault uses mutex objects and therefore one becoming a mutant is a possibility.  You can use the mutex checker bat script file to help detect if you have a mutant.  The script uses handle.exe executable which is a Microsoft Sysinternals utility.  You can get more details about this executable here.  Contact Microsoft for support of handle.exe.

To use the mutex checker download the attachment, unzip the file and follow the directions in the Instructions.txt file.

(MutexChecker)

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