LabVIEW crashes during editing sessions.

[JeffBoettcher]

How frequently do you see this?  One thing about issues like this that make them difficult to debug is you can try something and not really know if it helped or if you're just "getting lucky".

If you leave autosave on and you see this again, one suggestion would be to immediately note the system time, then go to [My Documents]\LabVIEW Data\LVAutoSave, and see if there are any files there.  Look at the modification dates.  Do they match the system time at the time of the crash?  Keep in mind by default they get updated every 5 minutes, so they might be close without it being related.

If you can actually reproduce this through some series of editing steps on a VI, let me know and I might have some other ideas, but for the time being I'm assuming it's been kind of "random".

[clark.leach]

Jeff,

You are correct in assuming that the event occurs randomly; at least no cause is evident.  It happens infrequently enough so I haven't noticed any pattern.

[Ray.R]

Are you seeing this with the same code of with completely different code?

[clark.leach]

I have been away from LabVIEW for a spell and just had reason to spark it up again for another project.  Guess what happened!  That's right; it just up and crashed in the middle of editing a VI.  This is by all indications a random event yet it happens way too often.  I would also like to point out, to all who have suggested that I turn off the "auto-save" feature, that nowhere in the Config dialog for LabVIEW 8.0.1 is there a way to disable auto-save.  I guess I'll just live with random crashes since obviously LabVIEW will never be completely debugged.  It's a shame that so few "people" produce good software these days.

[PaulG.]

If I had to guess you have something else going on besides a "bug" in LabVIEW. I've been working with PC software since the DOS days and LV is one of the most bug-free software applications I've ever used. And I've been using LV since V 5. I'm not saying it's totally bug free, but it's pretty good. But then again, some might say I'm not a "power user", either.

[clark.leach]

I have been working with "PC's" since the days of CP/M when they had toggle switches on the front via which you could program them.  CP/M was an open source operating system and "users" often had to write their own drivers (I had to write drivers to talk to my 8" floppy drives).  We wrote code in assembly language or machine code and liked it; and guess what, it wasn't riddled with bugs!  LabVIEW is one of the most massive collections of bug-riddled "code" on the planet, nearing the magnitude of the WinDoze kludge.  By the way . . .I still have that old Altair 8800 and it still works . . . cheers! Oh, and I've been using LabVIEW since 3.1.

[PaulG.]

"... LabVIEW is one of the most massive collections of bug-riddled "code" on the planet, nearing the magnitude of the WinDoze kludge ..."

Dude! Us "old" guys will show these young whipper-snappers a thing or two. I had a VIC-20. Fell in love with programming the very day I got it. And I still have it!    But LV is anything but "bug-riddled". I've survived LV 8.5 integrated into Vista. And she's very, very pretty.  

[clark.leach]

Lest anyone get's confused and heated into a frenzy let me clarify that I DO like LabVIEW.  I have had some issues and I'm unsure whether it's possible for one human to fit all of LabVIEW inside its brain.  I don't want this to deteriorate into a debate.  I simply need to vent periodically, and one of my peeves is software that inexplicably decides it doesn't want to play anymore.  It has become increasingly difficult to blame such events on WinDoze as it has become more stable (seemingly), so who do you blame?  Another of my pet peeves is inadequate, obtuse, esoteric documentation.  I suppose in order to REALLY learn LabVIEW one should fork out thousands more dollars for proper schooling rather than rely on the documentation as a source of knowledge. . . . .

[Ray.R]

Something I realized when I was managing a sw team:  "you'll never get a totally bug-free software"

Too many dependencies.  🙂

I remember the days of CP/M and 8 in floppies.  Also writing applications in a TI DSP where memory was at a premium, so all programs had to be minimized..  I'm sure Altenbach must have (or still has) had that background..  😉

As far as bugs are concerned, there are bugs in LV, most I can live with and they have workarounds.  Totally hate windoze, cause that's the worst piece of bug riddled crap I've ever seen...  So from my perspective, you can't compare the two 😉

But I do love working with LV!

R

[JeffBoettcher]

Apologies for any references to autosave being related BadToad, apparently we all failed to notice you are using LabVIEW 8.0.1.  The autosave feature was introduced in 8.2.

I'm sorry to hear you are having the problems you are...  I assure you, truly "random" crashes are extremely rare, if not downright non-existant.  However, sometimes the steps required to reproduce a bug can be very tricky to identify, depending on the nature of the bug.  If you're able to identify what steps you're doing that lead up to the crash, we could look into this issue (or at least it might help identify a workaround).  I will say that chances are it is fixed in a later already-released version of LabVIEW though.