The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired

[Guest William McIlroy]

My C# program is trucking along, reading and writing, reading and writing.

Suddenly, and without warning, it is diverted by an exception, as follows:

The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired. Sounds like the horse I bet on

came in last.

 

Obviously, a semaphore is a fancy Ivy League computer science department

amalgamation of a counter and a critical code lock. My program does not use

semaphores. But, I bet Windows does. What in heck is going on here? How

many other creepy things, like this unexpected OS hallucination, must I deal

with? And where?

--

William McIlroy

[Guest Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Re: The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired

 

 

"William McIlroy" <WilliamMcIlroy@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in

message news:C30E2C5F-2E3F-4C34-A2EC-7DC506EA8539@microsoft.com...

> My C# program is trucking along, reading and writing, reading and writing.

> Suddenly, and without warning, it is diverted by an exception, as follows:

> The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired. Sounds like the horse I bet on

> came in last.

>

> Obviously, a semaphore is a fancy Ivy League computer science department

> amalgamation of a counter and a critical code lock. My program does not

> use

> semaphores. But, I bet Windows does. What in heck is going on here? How

> many other creepy things, like this unexpected OS hallucination, must I

> deal

> with? And where?

> --

> William McIlroy

>

 

I would check Google and also the MS Knowledge Base.

[Guest William McIlroy]

Re: The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired

 

By inspection, the Event Log showed an undetermined kind of HDD error at the

same time the message "The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired" was handed

to my code by Windows 2003 Server. So, says I, humph. Must be a disk

problem. I tried my program again. Again it failed at the same spot. I

tried it a third time. Same thing. So, since the file in question was of no

earthly use, I deleted it. It went to the Recycle bin, error intact, no

doubt. The program had no further trouble. Lesson learned: Do not expect

an error message to convey more information than the simple fact that a

problem occurred and it is your problem to figure out what. I believe the

error message in this case violates the Unix standard for length. It is much

too long. However, it makes up for that with inscrutability. It speaks of

"The Semaphore" as if it is common knowledge what semaphore it refers to.

Nuts.

--

William McIlroy

 

 

 

"Pegasus (MVP)" wrote:

>

> "William McIlroy" <WilliamMcIlroy@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in

> message news:C30E2C5F-2E3F-4C34-A2EC-7DC506EA8539@microsoft.com...

> > My C# program is trucking along, reading and writing, reading and writing.

> > Suddenly, and without warning, it is diverted by an exception, as follows:

> > The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired. Sounds like the horse I bet on

> > came in last.

> >

> > Obviously, a semaphore is a fancy Ivy League computer science department

> > amalgamation of a counter and a critical code lock. My program does not

> > use

> > semaphores. But, I bet Windows does. What in heck is going on here? How

> > many other creepy things, like this unexpected OS hallucination, must I

> > deal

> > with? And where?

> > --

> > William McIlroy

> >

>

> I would check Google and also the MS Knowledge Base.

>

>

>