Hi,
We’ve just upgraded from LAN Zoo 7 to LAN Zoo 8 on a Windows 2016 server which has no internet access. The new Zoo 8 service is taking around 20 minutes to start. This was not an issue with Zoo 7, though that did generally take 4-5 minutes.
Port 80 is open in both the inbound and outbound firewall rules.
There’s no McNeel Update Service like there was in previous versions so I’m not sure what is causing the delay.
Any ideas, please?
Thanks in advance,
Teresa
Hi @TLS,
20 minutes seems a little excessive.
Can you open the Windows Event Viewer and see if you see anything unusual?
Does your Lan Zoo support any 3rd party (non-McNeel) plug-ins?
Thanks,
– Dale
Classification:UNCLASSIFIED
Hi Dale,
Other than the delay, there’s nothing unusual at all. Service starting at 22:26:03 and finally started at 22:43:47 this time:
The Zoo plugins we have are:
I’m guessing it’s trying to connect out during this period but like you, I also thought 20 minutes seemed a bit excessive. 
Thanks,
Teresa
Hi @TLS,
A late in the day hail Mary: If you server is running some kind of antivirus process (Windows Defender for example), can you configure it to exclude the LAN Zoo’s licenses folder?
%ProgramData%\McNeel\Zoo\8.0\Licenses
Thanks,
– Dale
I’ve been tracking this issue with another customer, and have found that the slowness happens when LAN Zoo is loading one or more license plugins. Do you have any plugins installed for third party products?
Hi Brian,
Just the plugins shown in the screenshot earlier in the thread.
Am waiting for the thumbs up from our security team to try Dale’s suggestion of exempting the LAN Zoo’s licenses folder from our antivirus. I’ll update as soon as I have results.
Thanks,
Teresa
I don’t think his suggestion will make any difference; the slowdown I’ve seen comes from loading the Zoo plugins. If you can get approval to exempt those, it would be interesting. They’re installed in the same folder as LAN Zoo itself.
Classification:UNCLASSIFIED
HI Brian and Dale,
Unfortunately exempting %ProgramData%\McNeel\Zoo\8.0\Licenses didn’t help. I’ve asked our security team for permission to try Brian’s suggestion of exempting the plugins and will update once we’ve tried it.
I ran ProcMon whilst I was waiting for the Zoo 8 service to start up and though I’ve yet to analyse the output properly, did notice that it keeps going round in cycle which includes trying to download from an external site. If I spot anything startling, I’ll update this thread.
Thank you both for your help!
Best regards,
Teresa
The LAN Zoo includes an update service, probably what you’re seeing.
– Dale
Hi,
We turned Windows Defender off completely before trying this time. The Zoo 8 LAN license service still took almost 20 minutes to start up.
Best regards,
Teresa
I think we’ve found a fix for this. I’ll send you an internal build of Zoo 8.8 to test.
Classification:UNCLASSIFIED
That will be great, thanks very much!
Was this fix rolled into the latest release? I am having a hard time getting Zoo 8 working on a new install (moving from Zoo 7 on another server)
Yes, this fix was rolled into the latest Zoo Server release. Can you tell me more about what isn’t working for you?
Hi Brian,
Apologies for not circling back. I made that comment while troubleshooting an issue. It ended up being the TCP port in use by PRTG Network Monitor (despite being configured not to use that port, it checks on startup if it’s in use and adds a redirect if not).
I was able to configure the PRTG processes and Zoo 8 with a dependency so Zoo always starts first and can occupy port 80 before PRTG’s check:
sc config “PRTG Core Server Service” depend= “Zoo 8”