The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired

My C# program is trucking along, reading and writing, reading and writing.
Suddenly, and without warning, it is diverted by an exception, as follows:
The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired. Sounds like the horse I bet on
came in last.

Obviously, a semaphore is a fancy Ivy League computer science department
amalgamation of a counter and a critical code lock. My program does not use
semaphores. But, I bet Windows does. What in heck is going on here? How
many other creepy things, like this unexpected OS hallucination, must I deal
with? And where?
--
William McIlroy

"William McIlroy" <WilliamMcIlroy@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:C30E2C5F-2E3F-4C34-A2EC-7DC506EA8539@microsoft.com...
> My C# program is trucking along, reading and writing, reading and writing.
> Suddenly, and without warning, it is diverted by an exception, as follows:
> The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired. Sounds like the horse I bet on
> came in last.
>
> Obviously, a semaphore is a fancy Ivy League computer science department
> amalgamation of a counter and a critical code lock. My program does not
> use
> semaphores. But, I bet Windows does. What in heck is going on here? How
> many other creepy things, like this unexpected OS hallucination, must I
> deal
> with? And where?
> --
> William McIlroy
>

I would check Google and also the MS Knowledge Base.

By inspection, the Event Log showed an undetermined kind of HDD error at the
same time the message "The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired" was handed
to my code by Windows 2003 Server. So, says I, humph. Must be a disk
problem. I tried my program again. Again it failed at the same spot. I
tried it a third time. Same thing. So, since the file in question was of no
earthly use, I deleted it. It went to the Recycle bin, error intact, no
doubt. The program had no further trouble. Lesson learned: Do not expect
an error message to convey more information than the simple fact that a
problem occurred and it is your problem to figure out what. I believe the
error message in this case violates the Unix standard for length. It is much
too long. However, it makes up for that with inscrutability. It speaks of
"The Semaphore" as if it is common knowledge what semaphore it refers to.
Nuts.
--
William McIlroy



"Pegasus (MVP)" wrote:

>
> "William McIlroy" <WilliamMcIlroy@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
> message news:C30E2C5F-2E3F-4C34-A2EC-7DC506EA8539@microsoft.com...
> > My C# program is trucking along, reading and writing, reading and writing.
> > Suddenly, and without warning, it is diverted by an exception, as follows:
> > The Semaphore Timeout Period Has Expired. Sounds like the horse I bet on
> > came in last.
> >
> > Obviously, a semaphore is a fancy Ivy League computer science department
> > amalgamation of a counter and a critical code lock. My program does not
> > use
> > semaphores. But, I bet Windows does. What in heck is going on here? How
> > many other creepy things, like this unexpected OS hallucination, must I
> > deal
> > with? And where?
> > --
> > William McIlroy
> >
>
> I would check Google and also the MS Knowledge Base.
>
>
>