Why ... ? (general)

Answer: Different email clients handle HTML text in different ways, with some garbling the text more than others. At the present time (June 2010) Yahoo Mail (ymail.com) does one of the best jobs handling Foxhound Alert emails, and Google Mail does the worst job.

Answer: See How do I get something to show up in the Last Statement column?

Answer: See How do I get something to show up in the Total Waits, Waiting Time columns?

Answer: Check to see if the target database is "Using 1 CPU". When a personal server (dbeng*.exe) is heavily loaded as far as CPU usage is concerned, it may not respond quickly to sampling requests from Foxhound. Try using the network server (dbsrv*.exe) so that it can use multiple CPUs.

Answer: In some special circumstances (described here) the Foxhound Monitor will enter "Connection timeout" state when it can't connect to a target database for about 15 seconds.

After a minute or so (by default, described here), the Foxhound Monitor will try connecting again, and if the special circumstances persist you'll see another "Connection timeout" message, and another, and so on. These messages will appear about 1 minute and 15 seconds apart in Foxhound Options - Display Diagnostics:

1531 2010-04-13 11:10:20.221 Full Build 3659a 1000000003 202a3a(202eh1) Connection timeout for target DSN ... after 19.9s (timeout threshold is 15.0s; see Foxhound Options) - 1000000005
1532 2010-04-13 11:11:35.895 Full Build 3659a 1000000003 202a3a(202eh1) Connection timeout for target DSN ... after 15.2s (timeout threshold is 15.0s; see Foxhound Options) - 1000000046
1533 2010-04-13 11:12:51.696 Full Build 3659a 1000000003 202a3a(202eh1) Connection timeout for target DSN ... after 15.1s (timeout threshold is 15.0s; see Foxhound Options) - 1000000075

See also...
Connection Timeout
Timeout Retry
How do I see Foxhound diagnostics, errors and exceptions?

Answer:

One possibility is that your Foxhound database is being backed up on a regular basis by a scheduled task, and that task runs the $backup_foxhound1.bat command file which automatically starts the database if it isn't already running.

See also...
How do I backup my Foxhound database on a regular basis?
Foxhound Introduction - Backup and Restore

Answer: The word "uninstall" implies complete removal of Foxhound from your system and that's not what it does.

The unsetup process uses the Microsoft Windows Installer command MsiExec.exe /X{B6CE87CB-2838-49AC-9E48-6E867BDD4B93} command to reverse the actions of the original Foxhound InstallShield setup process, and that is only one part of the installation.

The second part of the Foxhound installation runs the "post-setup" script file, and that script performs actions that the Windows Installer doesn't reverse.

To completely uninstall Foxhound, you have to run the unsetup process and then manually delete the Foxhound folder.

By default, Foxhound is installed in this location on Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\RisingRoad\Foxhound1

C:\ProgramData\RisingRoad\Foxhound1

See also...
How do I install Foxhound?
How do I install a new version of Foxhound?
How do I reinstall Foxhound?
Another version of this product is already installed.
How do I remove Foxhound from my system?

Answer: The delivered file rroad1.dll may be missing from the folder containing Foxhound executables. To confirm this, look at Foxhound Options - Display Diagnostics to see if there is a message "Could not load dynamic library ' ... \rroad1.dll'".

See also...
Could not load dynamic library ' ... \rroad1.dll'
How do I see Foxhound diagnostics, errors and exceptions?

Answer: The answer depends on whether Foxhound is connecting via the DSN tab or the String tab.

If you are connecting via the DSN tab Foxhound uses AUTOSTART=NO and AutoStop=NO even if you have specified something different inside the ODBC DSN. The reason is this: In general, folks don't want Foxhound auto-starting and auto-stopping their databases, they want that functionality reserved for their applications.

In this case, you will have to start the database before trying to get Foxhound to connect to it. For example, you can use the ODBC Administrator Test Connection button, or run your application to auto-start the database, or start the engine via a command-line script (batch file).

If you are connecting via the String tab Foxhound also defaults to AUTOSTART=NO and AutoStop=NO, but you can override that with an explicit AUTOSTART=YES if you want.

Answer: The samples on the String tab are coded for Windows XP, not Vista. For example, the path for the DBF parameter in the SQL Anywhere 11 Demo looks like this for XP:

DBF=C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\SQL Anywhere 11\Samples\demo.db

DBF=C:\Users\Public\Documents\SQL Anywhere 11\Samples\demo.db

Answer: This may be due to some problem that affects the normal ability of the Foxhound Monitor to reconnect to target database(s) in order to resume sampling when Foxhound is restarted. This is not an expected situation: even if Foxhound can't connect to the target databases it shouldn't become unresponsive.

In order to get Foxhound to respond so you can figure out what's going wrong, you can suppress the automatic reconnection process by starting Foxhound in "safe mode", also known as safe startup.

Here is an example of this scenario: A Foxhound Monitor session used the SQL Anywhere 11 ODBC driver to connect to a local SQL Anywhere 8 target database server on a Windows Vista system where no SQL Anywhere 8 ODBC driver software had been installed. Not only did Foxhound become unresponsive, but restarting Foxhound didn't help until sampling was stopped by using safe-mode startup.

See also...
How do I start Foxhound in "safe mode"?

Answer: The Foxhound database can grow very large when there are a lot of connections to the target databases, and when that sample data is maintained for a long time. All of that data must be copied from the old Foxhound database to the new one when you install a new version of Foxhound, and that process can take a long time.

See also...
How do I keep the Foxhound database file from growing so large?

Answer: Here's the short answer: Look for two identical scheduled tasks and delete one of them.

You should also rename the generation1 subfolder to generation2 because that's the name it should have.

The database backup subfolders are stored here on Windows XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\RisingRoad\Foxhound1\backup

C:\ProgramData\RisingRoad\Foxhound1\backup

The Foxhound backup process

All Programs - Foxhound1 - Tools - Backup Foxhound Database

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\RisingRoad\Foxhound1\backup

C:\ProgramData\RisingRoad\Foxhound1\backup

If the Foxhound backup generation2 subfolder is missing, but generation1 and generation3 are present, and the generation1 folder contains the second-most-recent backup (which normally would be stored in generation2), it is possible that two instances of the Foxhound backup process were started at the same time. If that is the case, the backup_log.txt diagnostic trace file in the generation3 subfolder will show the overlap:

Thu 04/29/2010  1:00:00.33 ********************************* 
Thu 04/29/2010  1:00:00.33 *** Foxhound backup started 
Thu 04/29/2010  1:00:00.78 *** Starting dbeng11 if necessary... 
Thu 04/29/2010  1:00:00.78 ********************************* 
Thu 04/29/2010  1:00:00.78 *** Foxhound backup started 
Thu 04/29/2010  1:00:00.78 *** Starting dbeng11 if necessary... 
Thu 04/29/2010  1:00:02.11 *** Starting dbbackup... 
Thu 04/29/2010  1:00:02.14 *** Starting dbbackup... 
SQL Anywhere Backup Utility Version 11.0.1.2276
SQL Anywhere Backup Utility Version 11.0.1.2276
 (463407 of 462632 pages, 100% complete)
Transaction log truncated
Database backup completed
 (268235 of 267633 pages, 100% complete)
Transaction log truncated
Database backup completed
Thu 04/29/2010  1:06:22.96 *** Moving backup to the generation3 subfolder  
Thu 04/29/2010  1:06:23.13 *** Foxhound backup OK 

The Task Scheduler accessory in Windows Vista makes it quite easy to accidentally create two copies of the same scheduled task in two different task folders:

Delete one of the scheduled tasks to eliminate the conflict.

You should also rename the generation1 subfolder to generation2 because that's the name it should have:

See also...
How do I backup my Foxhound database on a regular basis?

Answer: This is an error in the way certain versions of the SQL Anywhere server record the connection-level ApproximateCPUTime statistic.