Microsoft KB Archive/164495

= FIX: GPF on Session Expiration Using Active Server Pages =

Article ID: 164495

Article Last Modified on 5/2/2006

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Active Server Pages 4.0
 * Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0

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This article was previously published under Q164495



SYMPTOMS
Under certain circumstances, you may see a Genereral Protection Fault (GPF) when a session expires, or when Microsoft Internet Information Server is shut down.



CAUSE
This error is caused by a reference counting problem in Active Server Pages (ASP, which can occur if you attempt store an array containing objects in a Session variable. Consider the code example below:  dim Arr(1)   Arr(0) = Server.CreateObject("MyProgID.MyClassId")   Session("MyVar") = Arr When the session ends, or is terminated by an Internet Information Server shutdown, the object pointer is released. In addition, VariantClear is called on the Variant containing the array "Arr". This results in a second attempt to release the object pointer stored in "Arr", and thus a GPF.



RESOLUTION
The best workaround for this problem is to avoid storing arrays of objects in Session variables.



STATUS
Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

This bug was corrected in Windows 2000.



Steps to Reproduce Behavior
The following ASP page may cause the described error to occur when IIS is shut down or the session expires.

PAGE1.ASP
 Document Title  <%  Dim MyArray(2) Set MyArray(1) = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") Set MyArray(2) = Server.CreateObject("ADODB.Connection") Session("SessionAry") = MyArray %>   

