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    video - loses image

    I have been experiencing a problem with A5V5...during an editing session on a fairly simple form - it has a lot of fields but nothing fancy, they're all the same font size, etc. - after a few moves or clicks, I lose all except a black outline of the fields and text labels.

    It also affects my windows font - the icon fonts are all different, and my start menu shows up with nothing but black lines around each place where an icon should be. WHen I close Alpha, (If it doesn't hang up - which it has done twice), everything reverts to normal.

    I have noticed that this version is a resource hog - I"ve already applied the -NODBCHECK switch but this is still happening. Even if I close all other applications, sometimes it still happens until I reboot.

    My computer is a Gateway PIII, with 224 M of RAM and an 8M ATI Rage video card, running WIN98SE. I've been monitoring my system resources and there appears to be a lot of RAM still available, and the swap file never even gets close to max size...any suggestions on how to reduce the load A5 puts on my system?

    #2
    RE: video - loses image

    i don't really know what to suggest. have you tried this on any other machines?

    Comment


      #3
      RE: video - loses image

      I'll give it a shot this morning. I had my "system monitor" on this morning when I was editing this form and after a few clicks I made the same thing happen - went and checked the system monitor and it had eaten up ALL the memory left.

      Also I had made a form to act as a main menu and had a couple of subordinate menus (separate forms altogether) linked by buttons. The subordinate menus have several buttons on them to preview reports. I notice that when I open the sub-menus, the buttons flicker and appear one by one down the screen (in tab order). It takes a few seconds for all the buttons to show up. Everytime I load this form (it happens on another form with similar number of buttons) this happens.

      I like the interface a LOT but this drain on memory disturbs me...I'm trying to just run the application now with other applications open (which is how my users will work with it) to see if it's only in editing mode that the program uses so much memory.

      Comment


        #4
        RE: video - loses image

        OK I just tried it on two other machines. I managed to replicate the problem (plus some interesting effects like erasing the icons on the toolbar as I dragged the mouse pointer over them!) on a Gateway with 160M RAM, 8M Video card and Celeron processor. I then tried it on a new Gateway with a Celeron 130gHz with 384 M RAM and integrated video. It worked like a dream on the new Gateway. So I'm thinking it's the memory limit on the video card?

        Comment


          #5
          RE: video - loses image

          Oh yeah, the new computer has XP and the older computer is running 98SE.
          Is this version of Alpha designed to work better with XP than with other MS OS?

          Comment


            #6
            RE: video - loses image

            I run A5V5 on one old computer with 64 meg ram and 4 meg video with no real problems. However, you do mention a couple things that got my attention. If you do a lot of editing in A5V5, you will slowly use up resources, particularly in Win98. Windows doesn't do a great job in managing memory and A5, like some other programs, uses a lot of resources. I understand XP is much better. After editing for a few hours on the slow machine, I have seen strange errors, like odd video behavior. Usually, my first clue on that machine is the loss of the tab key. Then I have to reboot Windows.

            You also mentioned "when I close other programs". If you have other programs open in the background, the problem is more severe. If I want to kill my system, all I need to do is open Acrobat, Photoshop, and then Alpha. Everything goes to crawl. Screen repaints are very slow, some actions don't work, sometimes I can't even close the programs. Once the problem develops, Windows is unable to manage the memory and the only solution is a reboot. If I run A5 alone, I don't have much of a problem. Incidentally, I have also gotten the behavior in other programs, like Abobe Illustrator opened with Photoshop.

            This issue seems only to occur in design mode since Alpha uses a lot of xdialog and xbasic based tools which seem to use a lot of memory. Running the database in normal use doesn't seem to give any trouble.

            Jerry

            Comment


              #7
              RE: video - loses image

              If it were "slowly" using up resources it wouldn't be a problem, but it's happening within a few clicks. I get maybe 10 - 15 minutes out of a session before the display goes funny.

              I'm not running anything like Adobe concurrently. It's usually my email client (outlook) just sitting there. SOmetimes I'll have a Word document or Excel simple spreadsheet open. I know which programs conflict with each other on the machine so I tend to not open them all at the same time.

              I worked with a different form yesterday trying to duplicate the loss of display and wasn't able to force it to do so. It's a similar form (it's actually a duplicate table) with the same number of fields, etc. So maybe it's just that one form.

              Comment


                #8
                RE: video - loses image

                You may be right about the corrupted form. If a script continues to loop, or a background process starts to loop, the program will crawl to a stop. Since the problem appears only in one form, that would indicate that the problem is there. You could try disabling all scripts and code on the form and see if the problem goes away. Then add items until the problm returns. Of just recreate a new form from a similar form.

                Jerry

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: video - loses image

                  I've been a big fan of Alpha for a decade, but this but this latest version really does seem to need some work on the memory side, both in terms of RAM and Video by the looks of it. I'm using a high-spec PC with over 512 meg of RAM and I too only get 10 minutes out of it before I start getting very slow screen refreshes. I need to ALT-TAB between a browser and A5 when entering data and, to be honest, it is pretty much unusable after a few minutes.

                  All of this is a shame as I absolutely love A5V5 in terms of features and I was so looking forward to ditching Access for good, but unless I can find a satisfactory fix to the problem I'll have no option but to return to Access (shucks!)

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: video - loses image

                    Hi,
                    mine started working fine when I got done with the editing mode. For just data entry it seems to work great on all of my workstations. There are other snafus but not this one anymore!

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: video - loses image

                      I still run Windows 98 on my development machine and used to have fits with the problems noted above. Back in the V4 days someone suggested a RAM mangment program Customizer 2000. There was a trail version and I liked it so I bought it. While it does not always do a great job of automaticly freeing memory, one can right click on the icon in the system tray and manully free memory. I have mine set at 96,48 and 24 MB. Since this purchase I have had far fewer problems. Maybe it will help someone else and the trial is free. The web site and trial versions can be found at http://www.tweaknow.com/. There appears to be a newly released version as of Nov.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: video - loses image

                        John:

                        I think that the program you are referring to is called Ram Idle.

                        Another such program is MemoKit.

                        See www.memokit4all.com

                        Comment


                          #13
                          RE: video - loses image

                          If I remember right, Ram Idle is one of the products and is included as part of Customizer 2000. As they say in sales I went for the few dollars more, and received additional Windows features such as ez management of startup files, registry tweak ECT. This is not a commercial and I�m sure there are other programs that do the same thing. Over the years I probably gained as much from this forum learning about some of the neat little programs out their they solve real issues but I may be reluctant to buy or try: Examples Screen Rip32 is a neat little screen capture program suggested by someone on the board and some of the PDF programs that are low or no cost.

                          Comment

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