Error: “Ip Address is already being used”

The Cause:  As the error message says, another instance of running software is using the IP address that this session of BarScan is attempting to use to Synchronize with your handheld device.  It is important to understand that ONE and ONLY ONE session of BarScan can use a specific IP address and port on the same PC, or remote login, at the same time.

What To Do?:  One option is to wait until the Ip port is available again.  These conflicts arise when two users are trying to Sync at the same time and are expected.  The second user can wait until the first user is done with their Sync session.

The second option should be followed if it seems that there is a different problem.  See “More Information” below for more detail.  The first instance of software using the IP address must either be closed down by the user that it belongs to or must be closed forcibly by your IT staff.  This should free the IP address that is locking the communications for use by others.

More Details:  The BarScan application on the PC is attempting to communicate with its handheld devices. To do this, it uses Tcp/Ip.  When it begins to sync, it starts listening on a specific IP address (the address assigned to the current PC) and on a specific port (normally 10200). There are several conditions that can prevent this from happening, one of them being that the IP address is already being used by another instance of running software.  Also see the Knowledge Base [I am getting an error “Unable to activate port listening”] for more information.  The other software can be another software package entirely, or, more often, is another instance of BarScan itself running on the same PC.  How can this happen?  Here are the two most common scenarios:

1. BarScan is being run remotely using a package such as Remote Desktop from Microsoft (Remote Desktop Services), XenApp or XenDesktop from Citrix, Microsoft Azure Cloud or Horizon from VMware.  In this case the host server is running multiple instances of BarScan from more than one remote desktop. One user has already begun to sync their handheld devices and is still in this session when a second user attempts to start to sync their handheld device.  Since only one session can be active at a time on the same PC, this message may appear to the second user. Please note that there are several variations of this scenario, such as the first user leaving his session active, or perhaps a hung instance or the server software not releasing the IP or that there is an active “Batch” upload session.  In these cases either the offending user must cancel their session, the server manager must kill the offending session, or even more simply, the second user can wait until the first user is done or, if a batch operation is active, use that session for the sync operation with the handheld.  The only known way to proactively prevent this condition entirely is to configure the server application to assign different IP addresses to each session of windows running on the server.
2. The local user has started a second session of BarScan and forgotten that they have a minimized first session.  This can happen especially if their PC is serving as sync server for a BarScan “Batch” upload, which is simply a PC that continuously runs BarScan so that any user can upload without activating BarScan on their own PC.  They need either stop their second session and use the first one, or deactivate the first session.

This error message initially looks like the following:

If you select the “More Information” button the dialog will expand and display several tabs.  The number of tabs will vary depending what kind of error information BarScan can gather.  It will look similar to this:

If none of the above operations solves the problem then performing a print screen of each tab and sending the information contained in the error tabs to BarScan technical support will be important in assisting us in resolving your issue.