When working in an interactive SAS session, you might receive the following error message:

You might also see this error:

The problem occurs intermittently and only during an interactive SAS session. It does not happen in batch mode.

The issue can occur when you do any of the following:

• Resize a window to make it larger
• Run with a session encoding of UTF-8
• Keep Interactive SAS (Display Manager SAS) open for multiple days
• Use SAS Explorer to view a directory with a large number of files
• Click many different folders in SAS Explorer
• Click the Favorite Folders in SAS Explorer
• Switch between the Enhanced Editor window and the VIEWTABLE window

Resolving the Issue

To resolve this issue, follow the steps below to apply the hot fix and then set the Windows environment variable SAS_USE_THREAD_SAFE_MEMORY to 1.

Step 1: Apply a SAS hot fix.

Click the Hot Fix tab in this note to access the hot fix for this issue.

Step 2: Set the system environment variable SAS_USE_THREAD_SAFE_MEMORY=1.

1. Right-click My Computer or Computer and select Properties.



2. Click Advanced system settings to open the System Properties dialog box.



3. On the Advanced tab, click Environment Variables....



4. In the System variables pane (not the user variable pane), click New. The New System Variable command box appears. (Important: Make sure that you are not adding a new user variable. The top of the command box should say, "New System Variable," not "New User Variable." )



5. In the Variable name field, enter SAS_USE_THREAD_SAFE_MEMORY, and in the Variable value field, enter 1.



6. Click OK.

The hot fix adds serialization so that when you are in interactive SAS, only one thread can access the resource at a time. This serialization might cause a slight decrease in performance. This should not be noticeable. If the serialization causes a problem, you can turn it off by setting SAS_USE_THREAD_SAFE_MEMORY=0.

Operating System and Release Information

Product Family	Product	System	Product Release		SAS Release
			Reported	Fixed*	Reported	Fixed*
SAS System	Base SAS	Microsoft® Windows® for x64	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition	9.3		9.3 TS1M0
		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition	9.3		9.3 TS1M0
		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition	9.3		9.3 TS1M0
		Microsoft Windows Server 2003 for x64	9.3		9.3 TS1M0
		Microsoft Windows Server 2008	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows Server 2008 for x64	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Microsoft Windows XP Professional	9.3		9.3 TS1M0
		Windows 7 Enterprise 32 bit	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Windows 7 Enterprise x64	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Windows 7 Home Premium x64	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Windows 7 Professional 32 bit	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Windows 7 Professional x64	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Windows 7 Ultimate x64	9.3	9.4_M3	9.3 TS1M0	9.4 TS1M3
		Windows Vista	9.3		9.3 TS1M0
		Windows Vista for x64	9.3		9.3 TS1M0

* For software releases that are not yet generally available, the Fixed Release is the software release in which the problem is planned to be fixed.

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A fix for this issue for Base SAS User Interface 9.4_M1 is available at:

https://tshf.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/N21.html#54246

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A fix for this issue for Base SAS 9.4_M1 is available at:

https://tshf.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/M88.html#54246

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A fix for this issue for Base SAS User Interface 9.4_M2 is available at:

https://tshf.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/R86.html#54246

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A fix for this issue for Base SAS 9.4_M2 is available at:

https://tshf.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/R19.html#54246

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A fix for this issue for Base SAS 9.3_M2 is available at:

https://tshf.sas.com/techsup/download/hotfix/HF2/I22.html#54246

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Display Manager SAS shuts down at what appears to be random times, and a Windows pop-up message says "sas.exe has stopped working." This is caused by a memory corruption that occurs when two threads access the same resources as the same time.

Type:	Problem Note
Priority:	high

Date Modified:	2014-10-28 11:35:31
Date Created:	2014-10-02 12:17:00