Clarification on error mesage - Incompatible Ext Console

I have been intermittently receiving an error pop-up message from WinSCP SFTP transfers.

"Incompatible External Console Protocol Version 3"

This is occurring on batch scripted transfers, and the box that comes up requires user intervention to click "OK" or "cancel" to the prompt before the WinSCP session will complete.

It has occurred on multiple systems that WinSCP initiates connection to internally here, so I cannot necessarily isolate it to any one system, or one transmission file/script in particular. It does not occur constantly, it is very sporadic, so I have not been able to determine any kind of patterns to the environment when it occurs.

And unfortunately it does not create any entries in the WinSCP transfer logs whatsoever that I can provide - the WinSCP session seems to start, receive the error, wait for user input, and then immediately exits WinSCP without transferring(with an exit code of 0 for some reason).

I guess I am more or less asking for clarification on what this error message is meant to indicate? I am not familiar enough with the inner workings of SSH to associate the message with what is causing it. My only possible thought is that I have a background 'polling' process that connects to these systems, and that a foreground transfer may be attemtping to run at the exact same time and receive a conflict?

Transfers go from a Windows Server 2003 box to AIX boxes that are running Open SSH 5.2, and I am using WinSCP version 4.25 portable exe using ini files.

Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

You are probably mixing winscp.com and winscp.exe from different releases. Reinstall WinSCP.

You are correct that I was. I have upgraded both to the latest. If it reoccurs, I'll post an update, but hopefully I won't have to. =)

Thanks for the response.

Issue reoccured again today. The version number on both the .com and .exe as listed in the Windows properties tabs are both at 4.2.7.0.

Are you aware of anything else that may throw this error message even when both match?

Hello,

I am having the same issue. I have 5-6 upload/download schedules which run every 2-3 hours, however there is really only ever data to be downloaded/uploaded in the mornings. This error only appears in the mornings as well, but not every day. So it seems to happen only when there is something to transfer.


Regards.

Emexus wrote:

Hello,

I am having the same issue. I have 5-6 upload/download schedules which run every 2-3 hours, however there is really only ever data to be downloaded/uploaded in the mornings. This error only appears in the mornings as well, but not every day. So it seems to happen only when there is something to transfer.


Regards.

I have reinstalled as suggested above and checked versions as well. All the latest. Even tried installing into a different directory and cleaning out the original, no change.

Can you send me an email, so I can send you back a debug version of WinSCP to track the problem? Please include link back to this topic in your email. Also note in this topic that you have sent the email. Thanks.

Hi Prikryl,

I sent you an email :)


Cheers.

Sent.

I have been having this problem as well. Have you had any luck in fixing it?

I have been unable to reproduce so far, unfortunately, as it happens so sporadically for me. Will continue attempting.

jkm wrote:

I have been having this problem as well. Have you had any luck in fixing it?

I have sent you a debug version.

I'm also seeing this error as well, is it related to version mismatch or just something in a newer rev of WinSCP?

Registered on the Site incase you need to PM me about this.

WRT wrote:

I'm also seeing this error as well, is it related to version mismatch or just something in a newer rev of WinSCP?

Sorry, your post does not include enough information.

Please read how to troubleshoot problems with WinSCP. If it turns out that you are not able to help yourself, read how to ask for support or report bugs efficiently, so others can help you.

We have experienced this issue / error using both WinSCP version 4.05 and 4.19.

The problem appeared out of the blue with no changes being made to either the sender or reciever computer.

We are using Windows Embedded Standard 2009 (Basically Windows XP Professional)

Using SFTP, not sure of the protocol version we are using for file transfers.

We are using scripting / automation for command line file transfers.

FreeSSHD v. 1.24 for the Server side connections.

So, if you download the latest release, put both winscp.com and winscp.exe into the same directory and run the winscp.com, does it work (start)?

Sorry to re-open an old thread, but I notice this was never really solved.

We just had this problem occur 8 times in the past month, but cannot trace what the issue is. Until now the scripts have worked fine for nearly a year.

Was there any official solution for this?

We removed any old version of WinSCP and installed the latest version of the software. The script ran fine on it's first few runs, and we will wait and see if it continues to do so.

codamedia wrote:

Sorry to re-open an old thread, but I notice this was never really solved.

We just had this problem occur 8 times in the past month, but cannot trace what the issue is. Until now the scripts have worked fine for nearly a year.

Was there any official solution for this?

This issue is tracked here.