A5 crashes - solved???

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

Michael,
Are they willing to shut off the math co-processor? That will work - at least in my own experience.

PS Alpha must solve this problem. It must be very tough for a professional developer to explain this away.

[John De Jong, Jr.]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

I have been watching this message thread with some interest. A5 intermittently crashes on me and it appears to be more frequent since upgrading to version 4.5. There is no pattern to when it will crash and I get the very generic message �This program performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.� I then just shut down the program and restart A5 and continue until the next crash.

This is annoying but since it only happens to me on my machine, I have just been living with it, hoping Version 5 will be more stable and not have this problem. I was hoping version 4.5 would fix it bit it seems to have made it worse.

I am just curious if others are getting this generic message and/or if anyone has figured out what �illegal operation� is being performed and causing the crash.

I am running WIN98 second edition and have an HP DeskJet 1120C. In my case it doesn�t appear to be related to the print driver. I will crash when I haven�t done any printing or at some point after printing. It has no identifiable pattern.

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

John, I did a quick search of this board for '1120' and found several message threads discussing conflicts between the hp driver for this printer and Alpha Five. If your crashes are not self-inflicted (i.e. erroneous scripts created during development) I'd switch to another printer driver as others have recommended. Some recommend going with an older HP driver (for earlier model printer that's compatible with yours... the HP web site lists these); others recommend going with the default driver from Windows itself.

[ROBERT SULLIVAN]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

I have had problems off and on with HP deskjets and not just in ALPHA. It seems the more graphics and more fonts on a report the more problems. HP printers are nice but if you look at the many print cartridges and the many many drivers it makes you wonder what HP is doing.
In many cases the only difference in the print cartridges (for the inexpensive 500,600 series) is a physical nipple arrangement -not the electronics.
A few of my associates are now only recommending certain printers to their customers and are not supporting any other printers. They program in visual fox, access and other RDB's. The printer issues may be more frequent in ALPHA but there are issues with the other RDB's that pertain to HP printers.

Bob Sullivan

[Michael Humby]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

John,

I am trying to build a dossier on these crashes. The tendancy is to blame the printer drivers but I am convinced that the problem lays closer to home.

Can you confirm if your crash experiences are when opening selected form after performing a print preview. In other words does your app run OK until you do a print or preview of a layout. Does the form being opened contain an embedded browse?

Michael

[Michael Humby]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

Peter,

I doubt if I would be allowed access to their motherboards. My application is just a small part of their computer usesage.

I am at the stage now where I can predict and force the crash, in fact I think I may have solved the problem (said that before). The crunch will come tomorrow when I do a reinstall on a client's computer with a known rogue driver.

I will report my result if I am successful.

Michael

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

Hi Michael,

Sorry I didn't speak clearly. You don't need to access the motherboard, this is a windows software "switch".

To disable the Numerical Processor:

Control Panel/System Properties/System Devices/Numeric data
Processor/properties

Selwyn was the one who had recommended this a year or two ago. It does seem to work. I don't know if there is a real downsize to this. It probably would slow down programs like Autocad whose graphics are math intensive.

Peter

[whanigsberg]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

Hi Ira and everybody,

I was interested in Ira's list of suggestions because I had just had to reinstall a (monster Xerox, forget the number) network printer on one of my office machines. The way this works, you find the printer and it automatically installs its driver. I think I got an updated driver because I started getting crashes after previewing and printing reports. These reports had worked on the same printer for years and still worked flawlessly on my local printer in my office and at home--two different printers. So the finger did rather point to the network printer--or, rather, to its driver as the printer had not changed.

Ira had written:

1. Change the fonts used on your forms to a true-type (e.g. arial) and see if the problem comes back.

I was already doing this.

2. Try with a simple layout as opposed to a complex one. See if any of these parameters are the issues.

Ditto

3. Watch for overly small fonts and overly large fonts as a potential issue.

I wasn't using either. My most basic report--a simple class list--created the crashes.

4. Change the printer setup options to print fonts as graphics

This is a complex printer with many, many options on many tabs but there was a "print TT fonts as bitmaps" option deeply buried in the driver's options.

This has completely eliminated the problem.

So I want to thank Ira (again) and suggest that anyone with print-related crash problem to try varying this setting.

The number of options on this particular driver (never mind their combinations)is so huge I would probably never gotten to this by trial and error.

Bill

[csda1]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

Bill,

Just to be complete, I'll add one more thing to try for unexplained problems.

Turn down the graphics performance (see dispaly properties advanced settings) a notch or two. A slow graphics card can cause problems here if the settings is too high.

Regards,

Ira J. Perlow
Computer Systems Design & Associates
[email protected]

[Mike Konoff]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

Where's Jim Rowlen?

He was recently saying that he can't break A5-V5 and that it's as solid as a rock.

My question to him would be, did he have a chance to play with A5-V4.5 before he began using V5, and if so, did he experience the problems listed in this thread, and again if so, how'd he fix it. That info may be helpful to those of you that are having a hard time with this problem.

I believe that I read that he's in charge of a big shop of A5 users. Maybe somebody can email him to see if he's encountered any of these problems???

Mike

[JohnZaleski]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

I have a situation where I can produce the following error every time no exceptions:

ALPHA5 caused an invalid page fault in
module MSVCRT40.DLL at 015f:1021d7f3.

I posted a thread "xbasic curiousity" a while ago. The bottom line was that I would run a script that called acrobat reader to open a pdf file. It ran successfully.This is the parallel to this thread's discussion. It sounds like the first print preview always runs successfully. Then I would exit the acrobat reader. When I ran it the second time it bombed with the above. All problems went away if the first line of my script was a variable dimension ( dim john as c ) or I used a redim instead of a dim on a certain array. Interestingly, others took my script and it worked on their computers without the above fixes. I still think (never proven) it is a confilct with Alpha and the video driver's use of memory, which wouldn't be impossible in the case of print previews (the print driver is going to affect what goes on the screen during a print preview).

If anyone has a 100% reproducable situation that gives them an error:
1) If it's on a button script is the crash on a variable reference or a form preview line?
2) If it's loading a form when it crashes could you exit that form that normally produces the problem and run the same form from the control panel after the preview.
3) I know it sounds dumb, but you might want to try dimensioning a variable as the first line of the script loading the form. A single reference to a variable seemed to have shut off the ill effects of the prior event.

[Stan Mathews]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

"3) I know it sounds dumb, but you might want to try dimensioning ..."

not so dumb, wouldn't this dim statement affect (reseerve)memory?

[Michael Humby]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

This will either bore you to death or save you some very frustrated hours trying to trace a crash cause.

I am not a techy, far from it.

After weeks of testing and elimination, I have finally cured the crash problems caused with selected print drivers. The crash always occurred when opening selected forms after print previewing a report or letter etc in the current session. The layout being previewed was not at fault, I stripped my reports and letters down to default settings. Selecting another printer as default via Windows will usually cure the problem on your own computer but this is not an option for distribution. The tendancy on this message board is to blame the print drivers when in fact we should be looking closer to home.

I have an application that I distribute in runtime. The app runs perfectly on my development computer and on most other computers but it was repeatedly crashing on selected machines. At first I thought it may be down to older versions of Win 98 and 95, but this was a false trail. I finally narrowed the cause down to selected print drivers, three to my knowledge but far more via similar problems posted on this board. I downloaded a rogue driver onto my computer and was then able to force the crashes but finding the cause was a different problem. Anyone who has gone through the steps of rebooting and loading apps after elimination tests will know, it has taken hours on hours.

I finished up with three separate causes

1. I had a date variable set global at form level on my main form that had an intial value of // and each time the form was activated following a print preview it crashed. I gave the variable a default value and crash No 1 was cured.

2. I had a form with an embedded browse that crashed on entry but only when a print preview had been activated previously in the current session. The embedded browse contained character fields set as previous values under field rules. I removed the browse and placed the fields directly onto the form and crash No 2 was cured. This layout was acceptable though I did prefer the browse.

3. I had another form with an embedded browse (I have many others, no problem) that crashed following print preview of reports etc. If I removed the browse the crash was cured, but I needed the browse. I rebuilt the form time and time again, renamed it deleted it to no avail. Each time I did this I dragged the embedded browse onto the form and crash. I renamed the browse from the default Browse1 to D_Browse1, this placed it further down the list in the Alphabetical Xbasic explorer tree and crash No 3 was cured. (This may have been the reason for Crash No 2)

Now by this time I had made so many changes to No3 that there could have been other reasons for the cure but I am convinced that it was because the browse was first on the Explorer tree and likewise some variables that I name beginning with a V always appear at the end of the Explorer tree. This I am absolutely convinced is the root cause of the crashes with certain drivers. I am also convinced that the tab order, and object Tab stops on forms are also part of the equation.

I have tried to replicate the problem in a smaller app but have had no sucess.

NOW AFTER ALL MY HARD WORK, Peter Greulich suggested that I disable the Maths Processor and Bingo!, this also cured the problem even if I reloaded my original app before the above changes. I don't thing disabling was the cure, it was more to do with Windows system files being reconfigured on reboot after the change.

None of these conclusion bear any logic to me but hopefully Alpha Tech or someone out there will perhaps learn more from my tests and hopefully create permanent fixes.

I see that Ira is now on to something that was causing my No1 crash.

Hope this is helpful to others


A Very Relieved Michael

[whanigsberg]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

St. Michael the crash killer:

Bravo, bravo, bravo.

#1. The data variable crashes the form on open if there has previously been a print preview from another form.

I got that and your fix cures it. That is, I gave an otherwise unnecessary default value of 01/01/2001 in form design and the crashes stopped.

The printer is a Xerox DocuPrint N32. It's a big printer which you will likely see only in a large office.

By the way, my date variable was declared as session so it would appear that the empty (that is, / /) date variable rather than its scope is the problem. I did not try removing the "//" to see if that alone would solve the problem.

Micheal, everybody who is reading what you wrote can perfectly understand (and empathsize with) how much time you must have spent on this. At least you figured something out.

Regards,
Bill

[John De Jong, Jr.]

RE: A5 crashes - solved???

Michael:

Sorry for the delay in responding. I haven't been monitoring the message board very closely the past few days.. other projects keeping me busy.

As for the crashes, I must admit that I have not been keeping a detail log so I can't report on what has happened historically. I will pay closer attention and let
you know my findings. As of now, I had one crash when opening a form. This was after a print preview.

John