Jorge:

I have been running into numerous random failures in the latest released version of NextStart. I am not having issues with Workshelf other than the improper display of skinning on one machine (I sent you my theme last month). Here is a list of the most common problems:

1. Clock button on floating systray regularly disappears.
2. All my systray icons disappear so that neither the clock button or a custom hotspot can bring them up. Only going into preferences and clicking Apply gets them back.
3. NextStart crashes several times a day, most often when I am using the floating task bar (sometimes r-click on icon, sometimes just selecting a window from the preview, sometimes just hovering and letting the target window pop up).

All of these problems are occurring on two different machines and are quite random.

Are there known problems? Is there any info I can give you that would help?

Both systems are XP SP3, dual monitors with floating taskbar on 2nd monitor.

Lee

The exact message when NextStart crashes is:

NextSTART Exception Handler

Error: Access Violation

It might be possible to continue running...
Click Retry to attempt to save your data and continue
or Cancel to close NextSTART.

XP only, huh? I think I know what might be going on.

Is there another serious operating system for a software developer to rely on??

More information about vanishing Systray:

I put a hotspot on my start bar to "Refresh Tray", and it brings back the tray when it disappears.

btw, I believe this problem goes back many releases, since I remember putting such a hot spot to bring back the systray quite a while ago on my original machine.

Jorge:

I have not heard from you several weeks. The reliability of NextStart is almost pathetic, crashing a dozen times a day, half of those times forcing me to log on again to clean things up.

Are you more interested in features upon features rather than basic stability?

Yo!

Of course not, but after working for nearly 8 months non-stop (as in really pushing the envelope), I decided to take it easy for a month or so in order not to completely burn out.

Burning out (and it happens, ya know ) would be the last thing I need right now, as I have signed a contract with a German distributor to sell Winstep Xtreme on the German retail channel. This means I now have less than 2 months to finish the new UI and make a retail-friendly version of Winstep Xtreme.

Anyway, assuming your NextSTART crashes happen when displaying the window thumbnails on the taskbar, I'm nearly certain I know what causes this issue and it should have already been fixed for the upcoming 9.1 release. The crashes are for certain a XP specific issue, as Vista uses the DWM to display live thumbnails... Not really sure why they are apparently so frequent in your case, though, as they should only happen when a XP static thumbnail is updated while an older version of that thumbnail is currently being displayed.

Of course, a beta will be released first and you can tell me then if this issue has indeed fixed or not. I assume it is.

In the mean time, sorry for those crashes.

Jorge:

Congrats on your German deal!

As a software developer myself, I have experienced and do understand near-burnout. I really did not expect that you should drop everything in your life and fix my problem. All I really ask for is to have enough communication about the status of issues....and if that means you reporting that "..it cannot be addressed at this time.." or "..it is on my schedule, but no real prediction when it will be fixed..", that's OK. At least I can then make a decision as to what I need to do to make my work environment livable.

Perhaps the crash happens so often because I easily have almost 10-12 programs running a the same time. Some of them running in virtual machines, some related to my kernel development efforts, etc. Therefore, these thumbnails pop up alot as I move my mouse onto the screen holding the task icons (I use just icons for running tasks to save space), and sometimes I linger accidentally and the screen blanks to show the specific task. All the while I have .Net, c++, ethernet trace programs, and other things busy doing things.

Unfortunately, when NextStart crashes and closes, My Windows start bar does not return and I am left almost helpless. As you know, re-logging on or rebooting while in the guts of a complex multi-threaded debugging session wastes a lot of time getting back to that point.

Thanks for listening...I eagerly await and will try out your next beta.

Lee

Lee, another temporary 'fix', after this happens and until the beta comes out, is to kill Explorer and then restart it via Task Manager. This will bring your taskbar and systray back (the later with icons on it missing, usually), but it does prevent you from having to reboot or log in again.

I too experience the crashes and only in XP. I had to roll back to XP do to some hardware issues between my laptop and Vista. I haven't found a pattern but it does occur when I'm either trying to select a task or clicking on the start button. I just rerun nexstart and keep going but the crash does take the windows taskbar/system tray with it. Sometimes when I re-run NS I have no systray icons at all.

Did the new 9.2 private beta solve the crashes you were having in XP?

I've installed the 9.2 beta. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks!

Jorge:

I have not seen one of those crashes or any evidence of a memory leak.

However, I still have my floating systray disappear dozens of times a day.

Lee

I'm going to look into that next...