Under a number of circumstances you may encounter different problems when trying to connect to the EssentialPIM database over a network. Below you can find the most common problems and ways to resolve them.
1. Unable to complete network request to host
The reason for this error is that EssentialPIM client cannot connect to the server.
Solution:
1. Make sure that server's name (for LAN connection) or IP address is entered correctly.
2. Make sure Firebird is installed and running on the server. Open the Windows Task Manager on the server and check if it shows fbserver.exe and fbguard.exe processes in the list. If these processes are not present, install Firebird as described here.
3. Check your firewall settings. Following ports need to be open to allow EssentialPIM clients to communicate to the server:
- on Server machine for fbserver.exe:
- incoming: 3050 and 3051
- outgoing : whole range (fbserver uses random range of ports to communicate events)
- on Client machine for EssentialPIM.exe:
- incoming: whole range
- outgoing: 3050 and 3051
2. Error while trying to open file. The system cannot find the path specified.
This error appears when an EssentialPIM client connects to the server but the database file cannot be found on the server.
Solution:
1. Make sure the path to a database file doesn't contain any network-specific parts like PC name, shared folder or drive letter. The path should be the absolute local server path. In other words if the file path on the server looks like "D:\EPIM_Network_base\Net_test.epim", the same path should be entered into the Database file fields on the client's PC.
2. Make sure there are no mistyped errors in the file path.
3. Error while trying to open file. The process cannot access the file...
This error appears when trying to connect to the database file that has already been opened by another instance of EssentialPIM on the server as a local file (using File -> Open). When a file is opened this way, EssentialPIM takes exclusive access rights to it and doesn't allow any other connections.
Solution:
1. Close EssentialPIM on the server.
2. To avoid this problem in the future, always use File -> Connect to a server option.
If nothing helps, please ask our tech support team for assistance.