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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Mon Apr 23, 2018 8:59 pm 
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All makes perfect sense, Jorge, points taken there.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Mon Apr 23, 2018 11:14 pm 
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winstep wrote:
I was able to reproduce the crash on the Modules tab of Nexus Ultimate too, on the Windows 10 VM which I run at 150% DPI. For the time being I suspect this has something to do with GDI+ and screen DPI, and not so much with Windows 10.


Ok, I can see this is going to be a tough one to crack. It is apparently not DPI related after all, managed to reproduce the crash on another Windows 10 VM here at 100% DPI (well, once).

Unfortunately running the code in the IDE (which would in theory allow me to pin point where the error occurs in the source code) only results in the whole thing freezing solid when the error happens, so no luck there.

At this point my gut feeling tells me this is GDI+ related (I'm no stranger to GDI+ Access Violation errors), but what gets to me is that, so far, it only seems to happen on Windows 10?! Can't reproduce the error on my Windows 7 laptop either.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 1:33 am 
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Yeah, Moon Phase settings Crashes after about 5 minutes.

DPI 100% - Win 10 Home 64 bit Ver. 1709 build 16299.371 - 32 GB RAM - i7-7700K

Not CPU spike or RAM changes (per Rainmeter skin)
:roll:

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 5:11 am 
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winstep wrote:

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So, there is only one way to solve this problem in a way that everybody is happy: add a new option to set whether you need to press the ALT key to customize icons or not.


Actually this is what I had in mind (I agree it is more convenient when you set up the icons to not have to press anything). I think that the reason I had for not suggesting that was that would mean more work, because of the fact that would involve changing the UI to accommodate the new check box.


winstep wrote:

Quote:
It already does that for icons in the running applications side of the dock *and* NextSTART taslist/taskbar buttons.

My guess is that you are using the 'Combine' feature and the application you are trying to drag something into is actually on the left side of the dock.

Anyway, makes sense, I'll see what I can do.


I indeed use Combine feature. Thank you for deciding to look into this.



About the crashes, anymore testing you need us to do?


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 5:22 am 
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Vlad wrote:
About the crashes, anymore testing you need us to do?


Once I understood this was a widespread issue and I managed to reproduce it here, there isn't much more you guys can do, thanks...

Here's what I have managed to uncover so far (not much, unfortunately):

1. It only happens on Windows 10 (or rather, it does NOT happen on Windows 7, 64 bit or 32 bit).

2. It has something to do with constantly switching between the two different moon styles. If I change the code so that instead of a cartoon and realistic moon side by side, two realistic moons are displayed or two cartoon moons are displayed, it no longer crashes. So, whatever it is, it is not a bug with the rendering code per se (i.e.; making or displaying the moon images).

3. It looks almost random as to what triggers it (i.e.; sometimes you have to wait 1 minute, other times 5, other times 10 then it crashes twice in a row, etc...)

Still digging. Nobody said this was going to be easy lol

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 8:25 pm 
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I've looked over the code again and again and I can't find anything wrong with it.

This and the fact that the crash only happens on Windows 10 and not on Windows 7 is leading me to believe the problem might actually be some kind of issue with Windows 10 or GDI+ on Windows 10.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 11:38 pm 
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The solution is easy! Just have the settings panel turn off after about a minute.

Problem solved! :D
:twisted: 8)

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 7:06 am 
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winstep wrote:
Vlad wrote:
120 DPI


Right. What about you, Paul?


Umm . . . where do I find that information? My main monitor is 1920x1080 at 100% zoom level.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 7:11 am 
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vectornut wrote:
Umm . . . where do I find that information? My main monitor is 1920x1080 at 100% zoom level.


Thanks, but don't worry, it's not DPI related after all. :)

Screen DPI is what you call 'zoom level'.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 9:12 am 
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Try comparing how fast it crashes when you go winstep options - widgets - monn calentar options with how fast it crashes when you right click on the widget from the desktop and go to options. On my system it crashes 1-2 times a min with the 1st, while it may take up to 5 min in the later one.

Also an easy fix may be to have a tonggle on Wich image to display, instead of having both (since with 1 image it does not crash)

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 10:15 am 
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The crash will also happen in the Modules tab of Preferences if the moon module is currently selected.

The reason it takes longer for it to happen there, in comparison to the Moon Phase Settings dialog, is because the animation is deliberately a lot slower on that tab.

I can force the crash to happen more often by accelerating the animation. Under Windows 10 the crash freezes the IDE (programming environment), which prevents me from knowing exactly WHERE it happens. As for the executable, perhaps because of the built-in Exception Handler (the dialog that tells you there has been an error and allows to try to recover) I can't get a useful stack trace.

So, I can't pinpoint exactly *where* it is crashing, which is critical to help me understand the problem or find a work around.

Now, compare this to what happens (or rather, what doesn't happen) under Windows 7: I just accelerated the animation to the maximum speed possible (i.e.; limited only by CPU speed) and there is NO crash. It NEVER crashes on Windows 7. There is no memory leak. There is no resource or handle leak.

I also made an exhaustive review of the code, instruction by instruction: I was unable to find anything wrong with it.

In fact, I believe there is nothing wrong with the code. There is something very wrong with Windows 10 though, or (more likely) with the GDI+ DLL version that runs under Windows 10.

This looks like some kind of race condition and/or the GDI+ version in Windows 10 holding on to memory for longer than it should, then trying to access memory that has already been released by the application.

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 5:49 pm 
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winstep wrote:

So, there is only one way to solve this problem in a way that everybody is happy: add a new option to set whether you need to press the ALT key to customize icons or not.



MOAR options.

anyway have you considered simplifiyng settings for a light user then adding a button 'show advanced options' as many programs do


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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:04 pm 
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seeker wrote:
anyway have you considered simplifiyng settings for a light user then adding a button 'show advanced options' as many programs do


That's what I keep trying to do, bury least used settings in secondary dialogs.

...and then what happens is that people can't find them or don't know they're there. :) Also, what to person A is a secondary setting, to person B it's critical.

Take a look at what happened with 'Fast Boot': the setting has been there for ages, but I was STILL getting uninstall surveys from users claiming they uninstalled because the Winstep application took too long to boot on Windows 10.

People will be people. If it's not because it's too complicated, it's because it's too simple. You just can't win them all. :)

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 6:36 pm 
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And coming back for a moment to dropping files onto Nexus or WS app icons and files then being opened in the respective app - I completely forgot that's already happening and has been almost from the start or even right from the start! To quote a popular Brit. TV character, 'there's none so blind as them what can't see!' ;)

I should likewise have remembered that we ran into the same point in re: gfx files dropped onto app icons (on WS then) way, way back already!

Oh, one more thing - I mentioned about that most mythical of mythical beasts a potential File Browser and re-using WS code - in fact, come to think of it Jorge, I'm pretty sure the whole thing could be constructed almost entirely from existing WS and NS code! I mean, look at it this way, in a way you can already do a lot of those tasks that you'd want to do in a File Browser by setting up your NS menus and WS tabs accordingly and you're away. Add support for handling .zip and .rar files (and for opening them as folders) and a few other tricks (inc. of course being able to have multiple instances of the FB), and you'd have a first class file manager that would not only add value (and price, naturally) to Xtreme but would also make for an excellent stand-alone app. Not only that, making it fully skinnable would keep skinners happy for days! :P

Now, surely a genius like yourself could pull that rabbit out of a hat in, ooh, a week or two? :P

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 Post subject: Re: So, what's next after v18.3?
PostPosted: Thu Apr 26, 2018 8:59 pm 
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nexter wrote:
Now, surely a genius like yourself could pull that rabbit out of a hat in, ooh, a week or two? :P


Flattery will get you... everywhere! :) ...except on this particular case lol

I see no reason to develop a File Browser now. Unlike the way things were back in 1999, Explorer is more than good enough these days, and there are already some pretty good alternatives out there too.

Also, remember resources (in this case, my time) are limited. They have to be focused, not scattered.


ANYWAY, in other news: I have confirmed that the crash is related to GDI+ on Windows 10. I expanded the unhandled exception manager in Winstep to report more data, which gave me the address of the instruction causing the error and also the address of the memory being written to.

The I used Sysinternal's VmMap to visualize the memory structure of the Winstep application after the crash: the address of the instruction causing the crash is smack in the middle of the memory space used by GDIPlus.DLL for its own code and the crash is caused by attempting to write to a 4K section of the Low Fragmentation Heap protected with 'No Access'. There are several 260-320K blocks of memory in this section of the memory (bitmap data, I would say), all of them followed by a protected 4K block of memory. I suppose all these 4KB 'extra' memory blocks at the end of each bitmap's memory block are for protection against buffer overflows, etc...

GDI+ has always been a source of problems, MOSTLY because of Microsoft's appalling (lack of) documentation. There is no documentation, for instance, on something so simple as how many *different* versions of GDI+ were released, much less on what the differences between those versions are.

GDI+ attempt at trying to be 'smart' by NOT loading a bitmap into memory when you first reference it (forcing you to keep a reference to the original source open for the life of that bitmap), for instance, has been the cause of more crashes than I could possibly count... I shudder at all those thousands of wasted man hours by developers trying to figure out why their applications were crashing left and right at apparently random times - simply because Microsoft never bothered to *clearly* document what GDI+ was doing behind the scenes.

Thing is, I already wasted an incredible amount of time on this too. Although annoying when it happens, it is not a 'critical' crash and you can recover from it with absolutely no ill effects just by clicking on Retry. I might just leave it as it is for the time being while I re-direct my focus to other important things which I have been neglecting because of this issue.


AND IN YET OTHER NEWS, I am thinking about replacing the highlighted video on the Winstep web site (sorry Windy) with the following video:



Although it already has some years, it refers to the Winstep application from a productivity point of view. It does mention some crashes (which did happen back then but were fixed many years ago too) and at points confuses Start8 with NextSTART, but I think his enthusiasm and clear unbiased review more than make up for it.

Please watch the video and let me know what you guys think... My brain is already mush at this point, so all help is welcome (it always is anyway, but now more than ever, eheh).

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