Reported Issue

Some clients running Tourplan on a Terminal Server 2008 R2 have reported problems where Tourplan applications work for a while but then stop working. Errors like the following are reported:

Figure 1 - Typical error when Tourplan application stops working on Terminal Server 2008 R2

Technical Answer

Solution

Currently the only solution is to turn off Data Execution Prevention for Tourplan applications only. This does not expose the server to any more real risk because we would class Tourplan applications as 'safe' and they certainly do not contain any malware or viruses.

DEP has been a part of Windows now for some time, certainly since Windows XP service pack 2, and Tourplan has been running effectively under those versions. It is only clients using the latest version of Windows Server that have encountered this issue, signifying that DEP has been changed in some way. So the conflict is not really between DEP and Tourplan but rather with the version of DEP that is employed by 2008 R2. Having said that, there are clients who are using Tourplan on Windows 2008 R2 without encountering any of the problems reported here.

Therefore as stated, the only solution, without reverting affected servers to a previous version of Windows, is to turn DEP off for any affected applications including Tourplan.