Special Notes for
Initial Client-Server Connections on Windows

Establishing a first-time VisIT client-server connection on Windows can be frustrating - unless your host profile settings are all perfectly correct. If you attempt to establish a connection before entering the correct username, or BANK (VisIT's lingo for your HPCMP subproject number), then it can be a headache for users to figure out how your corrections can finally become honored by the connection process.

On Windows, basically, whenever a change is made in the host profiles — the following steps must be taken to attempt a client-server connection with those changes:

1. After making the changes, save them under Options -> Save Settings
2. Next, close the current VisIT session.
3. Open Windows Task Manager (ctl-alt-del ; Start Task Manager) and click the Applications Tab. Close all instances of the following processes:
   1. visit.exe
   2. gui.exe
   3. mdserver.exe
   4. viewer.exe

If any of these processes are running, it will not matter if the host profile settings are changed to correct values — these running process will keep the corrected settings from being used. Basically, the old incorrect settings are still in effect. This only happens for Windows OS; Linux and Mac OS are not affected.

You may now restart a VisIT session, and used the changes to your host profile. If your client was downloaded from the DAAC website, the only changes that will need to be made are your username, and the BANK field (your subproject number).

Once VisIt has made a successful connection to a remote platform, all future connections will operate in a reliable fashion. Any job-run settings do not apply to this process. There were hard lessons learned from the DAAC on Windows 7 64-bit systems.