I know this response is not going to be helpful in your case – but it did
remind me of a funny story which my first boss in a mass spec lab related to
me: Every evening around 7pm their autosampler queue would stop for some
unknown reason – and yet the autosampler seemed to be perfectly functional the
next day. Troubleshooting the device came up with no issues whatsoever. It was
so frustrating that they decided to set up a small camera to record the problem
as it was happening in the evening. They reviewed the recording the next day
(after yet another unexplained failure) and they could see in the background of
their footage, at around 7pm, the cleaning staff calmly unplug the autosampler
at the wall socket so that they could plug in their vacuum cleaner to clean the
lab, after which they’d nonchalantly plug it back in again, and move on to
cause their next disaster…
Best of luck with your troubleshooting,
Martin
Martin Middleditch
Lead Technologist (Mass Spectrometry)
School of Biological Sciences
University of Auckland
Room 301-422
23 Symonds Street
Auckland
(09) 923-7612 or 923-7540
From: ABRF Discussion Forum <email obscured>> On Behalf Of Kym Faull
Sent: Thursday, 18 November 2021 12:41 pm
To: <email obscured>
Cc: Whit Cohn <email obscured>>; Julian Whitelegge <email obscured>>
Subject: [ABRF Discussion Forum] A sporadic but re-occurring problem with our
Thermo QExactive plus unit
> Dear Colleagues: We have a problem with our LC/MS QE instrument. Long ago we
had a problem with it in which every Thursday morning at the same time the
instrument would quit because of some glitch with the internet connection. We
concluded that a strange signal from the internet was causing the instrument to
quit. We implemented a work-around in which the internet connection was
disabled for the time around when this was happening, and the connection was
re-established after the elapsed time. This work-around worked for a long time
with occasional instances at other times when the problem would sporadically
pop-up. The situation has recently changed. The hiccup is now occurring
frequently. It has recently occurred 10 times in 4 days. The error messages
that are reported are copied below. Of course we have been run touch with
Thermo people, but so far the problem has not been solved. Any and all advice
about this will be greatly appreciated.
Kym
Kym Francis Faull, Ph.D.
Director, Pasarow Mass Spectrometry Laboratory
Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA
Professor Emeritus on Recall, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral
Sciences
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Telephone: (310) 206 7881 (office)
Telephone: (310) 206 7886 (laboratory)
Facsimile: (310) 206 2161
Electronic mail: <email obscured><email obscured>>
<email obscured>>
Rest of post
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Julian Whitelegge <email obscured><email obscured>>>
> Subject: Re: we need help
> Date: November 16, 2021 at 1:28:57 PM PST
> To: Kym Faull <email obscured><email obscured>>>
>
> Kym, Have you tried posting the error message on the ABRF site ? I can’t
believe we are the only ones with this problem... Julian
>
>> On Nov 16, 2021, at 1:26 PM, Kym Faull <email obscured>
<email obscured><email obscured><email obscured>>>>
wrote:
>>
>> Kent: We have done everything you suggest and the problem still occurs.
Sometimes it occurs shortly after setting a worklist running, and last weekend
it ran uninterrupted from Friday until sometime on Sunday when it quit.
Attached below is the error message that appears when the problems occurs. We
don’t know what t o do next, Can you help us? Before we request a visit from a
service engineer I thought a ZOOM or WEbEX “meeting” might be the next thing to
try.
>>
>>
>> Kym
>>
>>
>>
>>> Begin forwarded message:
>>>
>>> From: whitaker cohn <email obscured>
<email obscured><email obscured><email obscured>>>>
>>> Subject: Fw: QE Error Message
>>> Date: November 11, 2021 at 9:03:33 AM PST
>>> To: Kym Faull <email obscured>
<email obscured><email obscured><email obscured>>>>
>>>
>>> The QE turned off again last night. These were the error messages at the
time of the event:
>>>
>>> -Info Service 18:40:20.142-07:00 on 2021-11-04 Starting acquisition
>>>
>>> -Warning Service 19:49:55.603-07:00 on 2021-11-04 reading data: A
connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond
after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host
has failed to respond
>>>
>>> -Warning Service 19:49:57.069-07:00 on 2021-11-04 reading data: A
connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond
after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host
has failed to respond
>>>
>>> -Warning Service 19:49:57.132-07:00 on 2021-11-04 reading data: A
connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond
after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host
has failed to respond
>>>
>>> -Error Instrument 19:50:04.601-07:00 on 2021-11-04
[Inspect/Networking/Control handler] No network connection to data system (s)
>>>
>>> I think we need to focus on remedying "A connection attempt failed because
the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or
established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond".
Not sure how to do this. Maybe Boston has some ideas.
>>>
>>> This also occurs when the instrument is not connected to the internet. It
would be great if these error messages could be shared among the Thermo
instrument technicians. Somebody has to have encountered this before...
>>>
>>> Sincerely,
>>> Whitaker
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Whitaker Cohn, B.S.
>>> Ph.D. Candidate
>>> Drug Discovery Lab
>>> Pasarow Mass Spectrometry Lab
>>> UCLA | Molecular, Cellular & Integrative Physiology Program
>>> (818) 268-5795
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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