as a reference, the controller in this instance was one i had never ever seen before, all i was doing was updating the panel file with a test page for reviewing pc control with the client and added the pc module to the controller.
the problems i had mentioned earlier where on a different system (in a different state).
i use either wireless or hardwired network from my notebook, depending on the site.
Okay - just remember, I'm not saying that IS the problem, but rather a guess, or at least a slight possibility. Unfortunately not all software is perfect, but at least with these conversations, hopefully techsupport is taking note as to what we're all doing, etc and the next release will solve this problem.
that's fine, i understand it may not be the problem but it may be a help. and i do agree it would be good to see if the controller mentions any problems.
one thought i was just considering. my notebook has two network configurations available (wireless or hard). could this be confusing TPD4 as to what network to use, even though windows should only be reporting one network gateway at any one time.
i may try disabling network connections that are not in use at the time, see if that makes a difference.
I am with Gary and Richard on this one. I have an installation that has not changed in over a year and is rock solid with respect to the Master and the code (and the touchpanels for that matter). With the 2.4 and 2.5 releases of TPD4, the first attempt to upload panels always crashes the application. There are no log entries on the Master and nothing unusual happens on the Master as the result of the failure. Restarting the application and performing the transfer generally works right away although I have had to restart the application twice in order for a transfer to work. Closing and re-opening different panel files before doing the first transfer seems to exacerbate the problem. With this same solid and unchanged installation, this problem did not occur until 2.4 but has been a consistent problem since that time. I even notice that the Connect function in TPD4 on these two new releases takes longer to complete even when successful - it behaves differently than from 2.3 and prior versions at least in terms of my perception and the intermittent crashes on connect attempts. It seems something has changed in this portion of the application.
As a sidenote, the panel types are MVP-8400s and TPI4s that I am using with TPD4 that are resulting in the crashes.
i've a new insight into this problem that may help.
of course, i've continued to be plagued by TPD4 crashing, usually several times a day.
the last two days i've been working on a CV15, that, until this morning, was running an old 2.48.x firmware. coincidently, i had no crashes working on this panel during uploads.
since the firmware has been updated to the latest weekly instalment (2.57.80, skipped 2.55.x) i've been getting crashes from TPD4 when i try to upload.
so it would seem that the latest round of firmware on panels may be creating the problem, depending of course on which day you get a firmware update i suppose.
Every time TPD4 has crashed on me in the last few weeks, it was a connecton issue with the panel. The connection was dropped or interupted midstream and TPD4 was unable to recover gracefully. I now make it a point to save my panel files before every load; I can get by some days with it never happening at all, but other days it can happen 2-3 times on the same panel. Probably the connection issue is related to your panel firmware - they do seem to be tweaking this in the panels, but someone also needs to look into TPD4's handling of connections as well.
Greetings all,
This is an issue we have had a great deal of trouble reproducing. As Rob mentioned while back, we'd like some help from anyone that can give us details or a proceedure that will cause a failure. I understand this isn't easy to quauntify. I also understand that we can't depend on you to be our R&D. Any help you are will to supply would be appreciated. I'd like to ask one of two things from any of you.
First
If possible send me a step by step proceedure that causes a failure
Second
Give me a call
I know a number of you have called into support but I'd like to hear from you as well. Just call Tech Support and ask for me.
i'll try to describe the problems in some kind of order, and will provide one of the panel files that are involved with the problem. (send me a message and i'll email you the file zipped).
firstly, i think there are two problems. one problem is a 'task could not complete' error, occuring sometimes when trying to open a page or do some editing. if you get this message, abandon the file. do not try to save it or upload it as it will generally have pages/images missing if you continue to use it after the message.
so this first problem started happening with the most recent couple of versions of TPD4. i never had those messages on earlier versions. can't recall if pages/images went missing in earlier versions, dont think so.
on to the second problem. this is uploading/network related. at a guess, it relates to the current generation of firmware (2.55.xxx something i think) and above. when looking for controllers, then panels within the controller, then proceeding with an upload; at any of those steps the TPD4 application may crash.
in both instances, any unsaved work would be lost.
i press Ctrl-S after almost every change in TPD4.
i am running windows xp on a 2.4Ghz P4 notebook with over 700Mbytes of ram and a 40Gbyte hard drive. Drive C (os) has 1Gbyte of free space. Drive D (Programs) has 100Mbyte of free space. Drive G: (data) had 500Mbyte free space. (yes, my notebook is getting rather full )
i have not installed SP2. i have always operated this notebook with several applications running (often over dual screens) and it has been a very reliable, solid system.
when i am editing with TPD4 i will also have Netlinx Studio running (possibly twice) and maybe TPD3, along with any number of explorer/ftp pages and notepad files. even with all that i rarely go over 300MBytes of ram usage in Task Manager. Please, dont anyone suggest i only run TPD4 with out anything else, as this would not be very productive.
that's about the short of it. if it wasn't such a moving target and i didn't have other work to get on with i'd provide more details. try some questions if it helps, and i'll write more if i can think of it.
contact me for a related file.
(a side note. i'd like to be able to run two instances of TPD4, as trying to manage it all in one window can be a limiting)
Does any one know if the new rev of TPD4 fixed this issue?
Here is the story I got from AMX tech support.
If the file is somehow corrupt, the lastest TPD4 can do nothing to fix it. On the other hand, the latest TPD4 should have eliminated any potential of corruption for new projects.
The best thing to do is copy and paste buttons from a corrupted file into a new file. I would not recommend pasting the whole page, just the buttons on the page. When you are all done, take the time to clean up duplicate graphic resources in bitmaps and slots.
This problem was resolved for me with the old (broken) version when I turned off page caching, as per AMX's suggestion. I have not turned it back on, nor do I feel any need to; my machine is plenty fast enough without the caching.
The actual fix was to the application preference "Flush closed pages on save", which freed the memory used by any pages that had been opened at some point (which loads the page into memory), but no longer have a design window open at the point a save operation is performed. The bug caused the unique page IDs used by those closed pages to potentially be re-used by any newly created pages, thereby making the old pages "disappear".
As alluded to, the preference is merely a way to keep TPD4's memory usage down in extended editing sessions where many pages are opened, changed, closed, and saved. With the preference off, all opened pages will remain in memory until either the panel project or TPD4 itself is closed.
Now if you can please fix the moving tool bar issue... Every time I open TPD4 the tool bars reset to some undesired default.
I had this problem as well, so I started tinkering with my toolbars. What I did was remove the zoom toolbar because I never used it. That helped and I've never had the issue again. This is how I have my toolbar set up (see attachment) and how it has stayed the same except for an occasional reset when all of the toolbars are on the left - but that happens when there's a transfer and connection issue.
I should also mention that my screen resolution is 1400 x 1050, which will make a difference in toolbar layout.
had this happen to me a few monthes ago. It has only happened using the Aqua Lens Template. Panel was very complex and large and this bug cost me about 5 hours of work. My laptop has a gig of ram and an 80gig drive with a gig of swap. Thought this problem was because of something I was doing wrong, it was very costly.
Thank you for explaining the issue in better detail.
Now if you can please fix the moving tool bar issue... Every time I open TPD4 the tool bars reset to some undesired default.
Is this still a Microsoft problem?
Brian
This is a common Microsoft problem with many applications. I believe it is a function of the Common Control DLL (or OCX, it's been a while since I did Windows programming). It can, however, almost certainly be overridden; it's a question of how much programmer time AMX wants to invest in fixing a bug that isn't theirs, when the fix may be overridden by future releases of the control.
Comments
as a reference, the controller in this instance was one i had never ever seen before, all i was doing was updating the panel file with a test page for reviewing pc control with the client and added the pc module to the controller.
the problems i had mentioned earlier where on a different system (in a different state).
i use either wireless or hardwired network from my notebook, depending on the site.
one thought i was just considering. my notebook has two network configurations available (wireless or hard). could this be confusing TPD4 as to what network to use, even though windows should only be reporting one network gateway at any one time.
i may try disabling network connections that are not in use at the time, see if that makes a difference.
I am with Gary and Richard on this one. I have an installation that has not changed in over a year and is rock solid with respect to the Master and the code (and the touchpanels for that matter). With the 2.4 and 2.5 releases of TPD4, the first attempt to upload panels always crashes the application. There are no log entries on the Master and nothing unusual happens on the Master as the result of the failure. Restarting the application and performing the transfer generally works right away although I have had to restart the application twice in order for a transfer to work. Closing and re-opening different panel files before doing the first transfer seems to exacerbate the problem. With this same solid and unchanged installation, this problem did not occur until 2.4 but has been a consistent problem since that time. I even notice that the Connect function in TPD4 on these two new releases takes longer to complete even when successful - it behaves differently than from 2.3 and prior versions at least in terms of my perception and the intermittent crashes on connect attempts. It seems something has changed in this portion of the application.
As a sidenote, the panel types are MVP-8400s and TPI4s that I am using with TPD4 that are resulting in the crashes.
Reese
of course, i've continued to be plagued by TPD4 crashing, usually several times a day.
the last two days i've been working on a CV15, that, until this morning, was running an old 2.48.x firmware. coincidently, i had no crashes working on this panel during uploads.
since the firmware has been updated to the latest weekly instalment (2.57.80, skipped 2.55.x) i've been getting crashes from TPD4 when i try to upload.
so it would seem that the latest round of firmware on panels may be creating the problem, depending of course on which day you get a firmware update i suppose.
I have had the crashing problem as well.
Try doing a connect to the Master before opening the panel file. For some reason opening the panel file before connecting causes the problem.
This is an issue we have had a great deal of trouble reproducing. As Rob mentioned while back, we'd like some help from anyone that can give us details or a proceedure that will cause a failure. I understand this isn't easy to quauntify. I also understand that we can't depend on you to be our R&D. Any help you are will to supply would be appreciated. I'd like to ask one of two things from any of you.
First
If possible send me a step by step proceedure that causes a failure
Second
Give me a call
I know a number of you have called into support but I'd like to hear from you as well. Just call Tech Support and ask for me.
Thanks for anything you can do to help
i'll try to describe the problems in some kind of order, and will provide one of the panel files that are involved with the problem. (send me a message and i'll email you the file zipped).
firstly, i think there are two problems. one problem is a 'task could not complete' error, occuring sometimes when trying to open a page or do some editing. if you get this message, abandon the file. do not try to save it or upload it as it will generally have pages/images missing if you continue to use it after the message.
so this first problem started happening with the most recent couple of versions of TPD4. i never had those messages on earlier versions. can't recall if pages/images went missing in earlier versions, dont think so.
on to the second problem. this is uploading/network related. at a guess, it relates to the current generation of firmware (2.55.xxx something i think) and above. when looking for controllers, then panels within the controller, then proceeding with an upload; at any of those steps the TPD4 application may crash.
in both instances, any unsaved work would be lost.
i press Ctrl-S after almost every change in TPD4.
i am running windows xp on a 2.4Ghz P4 notebook with over 700Mbytes of ram and a 40Gbyte hard drive. Drive C (os) has 1Gbyte of free space. Drive D (Programs) has 100Mbyte of free space. Drive G: (data) had 500Mbyte free space. (yes, my notebook is getting rather full
i have not installed SP2. i have always operated this notebook with several applications running (often over dual screens) and it has been a very reliable, solid system.
when i am editing with TPD4 i will also have Netlinx Studio running (possibly twice) and maybe TPD3, along with any number of explorer/ftp pages and notepad files. even with all that i rarely go over 300MBytes of ram usage in Task Manager. Please, dont anyone suggest i only run TPD4 with out anything else, as this would not be very productive.
that's about the short of it. if it wasn't such a moving target and i didn't have other work to get on with i'd provide more details. try some questions if it helps, and i'll write more if i can think of it.
contact me for a related file.
(a side note. i'd like to be able to run two instances of TPD4, as trying to manage it all in one window can be a limiting)
Here is the story I got from AMX tech support.
If the file is somehow corrupt, the lastest TPD4 can do nothing to fix it. On the other hand, the latest TPD4 should have eliminated any potential of corruption for new projects.
The best thing to do is copy and paste buttons from a corrupted file into a new file. I would not recommend pasting the whole page, just the buttons on the page. When you are all done, take the time to clean up duplicate graphic resources in bitmaps and slots.
I have not had any recurrence since, and have been using most current versions within a week or two of release.
Only unique thing in retrospect is a module driven popup for a InFocus projector. Please wait pages for warm up and cool down.
Bill Ravenel
As alluded to, the preference is merely a way to keep TPD4's memory usage down in extended editing sessions where many pages are opened, changed, closed, and saved. With the preference off, all opened pages will remain in memory until either the panel project or TPD4 itself is closed.
Hope this sheds some light on things.
Thank you for explaining the issue in better detail.
Now if you can please fix the moving tool bar issue... Every time I open TPD4 the tool bars reset to some undesired default.
Is this still a Microsoft problem?
Brian
I had this problem as well, so I started tinkering with my toolbars. What I did was remove the zoom toolbar because I never used it. That helped and I've never had the issue again. This is how I have my toolbar set up (see attachment) and how it has stayed the same except for an occasional reset when all of the toolbars are on the left - but that happens when there's a transfer and connection issue.
I should also mention that my screen resolution is 1400 x 1050, which will make a difference in toolbar layout.
had this happen to me a few monthes ago. It has only happened using the Aqua Lens Template. Panel was very complex and large and this bug cost me about 5 hours of work. My laptop has a gig of ram and an 80gig drive with a gig of swap. Thought this problem was because of something I was doing wrong, it was very costly.