Re: Causes of Application Hangs

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

Hey Mark,

I have a similar problem.

VB6 Sp6 on an XP sp1 machine using IE and Media PLayer.

The application plays an AVI chosen from a menu. When idle for several
minutes a series of still images are rotated in a screen saver effect.

3ghz intel boards, FX5200 video cards, USB keyboard and a relay
triggered by +12 or -12 com 1 activation turns on/off a light.

The CPU had it's hyperthreading turned off, this stopped a lot of
hangs. Reducing RAM from 512 to 256 meg helped too.

Movies are stored on a removable 400gig drive and the opperating
system is on 2 gig partition.

My problem is intermittant. Very. 5am every morning the entire C drive
is reghosted. Some days the application will hang 3 to 4 times and
after a reghost never show a problem for some days.

There are 40 or more (I lost count) of these computers. Some
installations have 6 identical machines. Absolutely physically
identical right down to near sequential serial numbers!

Some machines have never caused one problem while others are so
problematic I am almost ready to rewrite the entire project from an
alternative angle.

Additionally, the computers which cause the most concern have been
moved into the workshop for close monitoring. Can you guess what
happens? NOTHING. They never fail when I am able to examine them first
hand.

Tools have been written, logs have been kept and nothing can be
identified. Each time I compensate for one area of concern some new
symptom arises.

I tried the most recommended watchdog program to look after things but
it was never able to detect when the program hang. So I wrote my own
watchdog program. Now guess what happens? Either some new problem
occurs or the watchdog program hangs along with the movie player.

Once or twice someone has been on hand to test remotely for me. An
auto loading CD shows there is no activity from the program but the
keybord is responding. Alternately, if the test monitor program is not
used, the keyboard fails to respond. Or the other way around too.

There is no consitancy with this problem and recently new
installations have seen even worse behaviour. Unfortunately for me
they are on the other side of Australia. Perhaps we were too impatient
to install the latest 20 computers but there is need. Local machines
have been behaving themselves since the watchdog was installed, within
opperational expectation. Still, there should not been this type of
problem.

I hope that some of the modification and ideas I employed have given
you insight into your own problem or a indication of your next course
of action.

If anyone can shed more light on my problem please write immediately!
Please???

Dion...
[o]



On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 21:16:24 -0500, "wxforecaster"
<ebookbinder@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Is there a list anywhere of causes of application hangs? By hangs I mean an
>app that is unresponsible to any mouse or keyboard interaction and will not
>auto-redraw. A ctrl-alt-del shows the app running at nearly 100% CPU and a
>forceful kill is the only way to pacify your PC?
>
>I have a fairly intensive application which will hang at random intervals
>(sometimes can take minutes, sometimes can take days).
>
>I checked all my Do/While and Do/Until loop conditions and none have an
>unexitable condition. Even if it was there, wouldn't the DoEvents command
>from within still keep the app happy?
>
>So, what else could it be? Obviously it's a programming error of some sort
>because the software operates just fine with no memory leaks of any sort
>normally. It just gets "stuck" in this state and I'd like to know why.
>
>At the very least it would be nice to be *where* the program is stuck when
>this happens (which Sub/function, etc..).
>
>Thanks in advance,
>Mark
>

.

Relevant Pages