Let us say he says, “No,” it is a problem with some users
sporadically.
Hmmm, in this case things get trickier. Now, you will need
to find out if it is a problem with a specific user or multiple users (not
simultaneously though). Let us say there is 1 specific user who sees this issue
quite often. What would that imply? Well, as you might have guessed, it could
be something related to some client side settings or actions. You might like to
ask the following questions and start making certain conclusions and isolating
the issue further.
Does the client face the same problem with a specific
machine on his end?
Maybe he has not tried to visit the same website from multiple machines. If
possible, ask him to try doing it from a different machine (for example, if the
customer is using Win XP, ask him to check it on a different WinXP AND Win 2k3
box as well). It could be something specific to his machine settings. We could
have checked his machine settings as well, but why waste time in checking the
stuff if you do not have enough proof that it is a problem with that specific
machine? If the end user says that the issue persists only with his Box then
you have a reproducible scenario and you have drilled down to a piece of
hardware/software which could be causing that issue. Good job so far!
Now, how do we say that it is a problem with the hardware (network
wire/router/etc etc) or software (browser settings/policies on his box)? I
would suggest using a separate browser, say Mozilla and have him check it. If
you find that Mozilla browser works perfectly, it HAS to be one of the settings
in his Internet Explorer. Start with Cookie related settings and check you are
not running out of space in Temporary internet files, number of cookies, etc.
There is tool called Fiddler (it is an HTTP Debugging Proxy tool) which could
help you check the settings at the problematic client. You could also use
Network Monitor to get network traces and find out about what is going wrong. I
have a blog entry which talks about how
to fix cookie related issues.
Maybe there is a problem with the User’s account in your
code (if your code checks that specific user to be good/bad depending on some
criteria). You should be able to check those things using regular ASP.NET
Tracing or regular debugging techniques based on your application architecture.
Let us say he says, “All the users face this problem but not
at the same time.”
Okay, in this case you can easily guess that there could be
some problem with the Server. Now, since you have already proven that AppDomain
is not getting recycled and Worker process is also not dieing, what could be
the problem?
Notice… it is not a problem which “All the users face at the
same time.” It is something which is happening to ALL the users, BUT NOT AT THE
SAME TIME.