A simple problem with LLNL's VisIt

Recently I found the LLNL's visualization software called VisIt. It has many capabilities and the graphics looked promising from their screenshots. So I wanted to give it a try. However, I had a problem and found the solution with a trial and error way. Since VisIt is developed to be working on distributed systems and parallel systems, it is always using sockets to connect to its server part even you are using them on the same computer.

So when you call the main program with gui,

>visit.exe

It will generate the following commands

Running: "C:\Program Files\LLNL\VisIt 1.9.0\gui"
Running: "C:\Program Files\LLNL\VisIt 1.9.0\viewer" -geometry 1272x1020+408+0 -borders 22,4,4,4 -shift 4,22 -p
reshift 4,22 -defer -host your.hostname -port 5600
Running: "C:\Program Files\LLNL\VisIt 1.9.0\mdserver" -host your.hostname -port 5602

So if you are running it the first time, Windows will ask you to open the ports given above to be unblocked. I unblocked them.

Then suddenly at 32%, mdserver crashed.

After several forum messages and trials, I was still getting the same error.

Later, I installed VisIt to my home computer also and it worked without a problem. Therefore, I started looking for the differences between my two computers. The first and the most obvious difference was with the network connections. At my home computer I had VMWare installed. When you install VMWare, it creates several different network connections, which were enabled by default. Even though they are not real connections, VisIt still handled them according to their IP adresses.

Finally, I disabled all my network connections created by VMWare. Give one more try to VisIt and it started working.

I think the fix will be considered with the next release of VisIt.