If your agent communicates with the server, runs the project program for less than a few minutes rather than many hours and then communicates with the server again, this kind of behavior could be the result of one or more of the following. First, we have confirmed that a machine infected with certain viruses exhibits this problem. Please scan your machine for viruses.

Second, this occurs if your paging/swap file that is too small, you don't have virtual memory enabled, or you are running enough other applications that not enough virtual memory is left for the agent. Currently the software does not have the ability to check your virtual memory settings as part of its system prerequisite check. You may need to increase the maximum paging/swap file size so that the software can allocate about 200 MB of additional virtual memory, provided you have the disk space available. In Windows XP, look at Control Panel-> System-> Advanced-> Performance Settings-> Advanced-> Virtual Memory - Change. In Windows 2000, look at Control Panel-> System-> Advanced-> Performance Options-> Change. In Windows 98 go to Start-> Settings-> Control Panel-> System->Performance->Virtual Memory. The maximum paging file size should be at least 2 or 3 times your real memory size, and should preferably be at least 512MB, whichever is greater. If the problem occurs because you are running many applications, which use up the virtual memory, just increase the maximum by at least 200 MB. Watch for applications which have "memory leaks", those allocating more and more memory until they hit the limit. Simply rebooting may help in this case. Even though the Rosetta program allocates about 200 MB it typically touches only around 30 MB ("working set size") most of the time, so your system should not page a lot unless you are running other memory hungry applications along with it. That is why we require machines to have 128MB at a minimum and virtual memory enabled. The amount of memory used by the agent can be a factor in machines with less than 512 MB of memory. You might notice some delays due to paging when the agent is preempted by any other work. The agent runs at lowest CPU priority so that it immediately yields to other work to be done on your PC. However, paging does create some delays. If a low amount memory is a significant problem for your system, consider running the agent only as a screen saver. On the agent, go to the preferences window (the one with the check icon) and select "Run only as Screen Saver" and then click on "Apply". Over the next weeks, we will be trying to see if there are ways to further reduce the 200 MB allocation and possibly also the working set size.

Third, the problem behavior might occur due to your Data Execution Prevention setting. See the post titled "Another reason for a paused agent" in the Known Issues forum for more information about this.

Finally, your machine may have a hardware problem. Try running a memory test program and a CPU testing program. There are many available and examples can be found if you search for "memory test" and "CPU tester" on the Internet.