SparkLabs Forum

Hi ljorg,

Changing DNS is the only reliable way to manage it I'm afraid at the moment, we are working on other methods though.

If you are willing to help us, could you please send us a copy of the System Information (msinfo32) as well as a copy of RevertConfig.txt, located at C:\Program Files\Viscosity\Resources from a PC that has crashed, frozen or blue screen and stuck in this state, this will hopefully help us see what is going on. Could you also send us any Event Viewer log items from the crash as well as a description of what occurred.

Regards,
Eric

Hey Eric,

I have been assigned to follow up on this matter instead of ljorg.

Description:
We heard of the problem for the first time some time ago. We thought it was a small glitch. But after this months Patch Tuesday, a lot of our devices with Windows 10 have experienced the problem. The problem occurs for instance when a Win 10 pc is on VPN and updates are installed. When the deadline for installing updates is reached, the pc is forcefully restarted. After the reboot, DNS for the Wi-Fi adapter is still manual and pointing at 127.0.0.1.
The problem is the same on Windows 7 devices, but we haven't yet seen it on Win7 as much. Maybe it is because the Win 10 devices we have are Surfaces. Surfaces are often in sleep mode than a regular pc and then the Surface is being rebooted from sleep.

You can reproduce the problem on any device: Connect via VPN with Viscosity and kill viscosity forcefully (taskkill /im viscosity.exe /F /T). That is essential what is happening when a device is forcefully restarted when Windows updates ahve been installed.

Do you still want log-files and msinfo32 files? If you do, where/how do you want them? Please point me to an email-address or ftp-site.

Thanks a lot for all your help!
Best regards,
Soeren.

Hi kbswep

Please send a copy of the files to our support email. When you pick up a copy of the files, please ensure that the failure is genuine and not one you have forced by killing processes. Can you also check the Event Viewer for errors around the time the problem occurs.
https://www.sparklabs.com/support/#contact

In regards to killing Viscosity forcefully, you should notice that OpenVPN is still running if you force kill Viscosity. If you then kill the openvpn process or disable the Viscosity adapter that is in use, DNS should be reset to normal. Under normal behaviour, which we can replicate again and again, if you leave your PC in this state and do not kill OpenVPN and just reboot, the computer will be back to normal after the reboot.

We have also tested Viscosity under Windows Updates like you mention and we also have a Surface in our testing fleet. We do our best to ensure that Viscosity will recover the PC to normal operation when a crash or unknown problem occurs, whether it be the PC's fault or Viscosity's, clearly there is a scenario in your setup that we have not seen before and would like to get to the bottom of.

Regards,
Eric