LabVIEW crashing often

[BPerlman]

Hi.  I'm using LabVIEW 8.6 and it seems to be crashing/hanging a couple of times a day!  I have not kept track of the circumstances each time, but the last crash I was trying to do some change to the front panel indicator of a (quite large) cluster.  Generally LabVIEW hangs (not reponding) rather than closing.  I have to have Windows shut it down.

I am concerned that there could be something I have done wrong in my VIs which are causing some problem and LabVIEW is crashing during some innocent operation a bit later.

I don't expect any complete answers here because the information I am presenting is as of now quite sketchy.  But perhaps someone could point me in the right direction of what to look for -- especially if it could be something I am doing wrong in my coding -- or how to get more information about the error.

Thank you.

B.

[Sarah_Y]

Hi B,

The more information you can provide, the better we can help!  If you can answer any or all of these questions, hopefully someone will be able to get to the bottom of it.

1. Does LV only crash when you are using this particular vi or does it crash with other vis too?

2. Does the crash occur when you perform a certain function or does it crash for a variety of different functions/button pushing?

3. Does LV crash when you are editing the vi or when you are running the vi?

4. When you ust ctrl alt delete to shut down the program, do you ever get an option to send an error report?  If you do, please please please send it in!  We have a team dedicated to reading and addressing those and trying to make LV better.

5. Have you tried running this on another machine?  Does it crash on that machine too?

6. Have you ever had this vi working before?

Any more details you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

[BPerlman]

Hi Sarah.

Thank you for the list of questions. It will help me gather information.  For starters:

1. Does LV only crash when you are using this particular vi or does it crash with other vis too?

If I am working on one VI and occasionally go into other VIs that it uses, is that called "with other vis" or is it considered still in the same one?  I am working on little apps which demonstrate a couple dozen VIs which are dll wrappers.  Actually I now have two or three little apps, but they are all copied and modified from the first one.

2. Does the crash occur when you perform a certain function or does it crash for a variety of different functions/button pushing?

I'll have to take careful note.  It may have always happened when doing some kind of editing/modification on the front panel to a large cluster, or shortly after such an edit, but I am not 100% sure.

3. Does LV crash when you are editing the vi or when you are running the vi?

I am pretty sure it is only when editing and I think only on the front panel, not the block diagram.

4. When you ust ctrl alt delete to shut down the program, do you ever get an option to send an error report?  If you do, please please please send it in!  We have a team dedicated to reading and addressing those and trying to make LV better.

I'll try this if it asks me.  I think it did and I said "no" -- I've never had any help from those error reports (not having to do with LabVIEW).

5. Have you tried running this on another machine?  Does it crash on that machine too?

Haven't tried this.  If I had something reproducible I would, but it is more like I work all day on it and here and there it crashes...

6. Have you ever had this vi working before?

This is a completely new project that I started a week or two ago. But I do have the VI working.  It seems to work great.  I just don't know if it is doing something silently bad that is messing up LabVIEW, or if the problem is in LabVIEW.

OK, I'll keep trying to notice more details.

B. 

[BPerlman]

OK, a little more information to report.

I suspected the large cluster, so I tested this theory out first thing I did in LabVIEW this morning.

Here's the sequence:

1.  Opened LabVIEW

2.  Opened my demo application VI ( the third one I've made, but made by saving a copy of the first one and then modifying it)

3.  Widened the first element of the large cluster

4.  Tried to select all the elements but must have jiggled my finger off the mouse a second so it stopped scrolling down and selecting in the middle  (this was by mistake and I don't know if it is relevant!)

5.  Went back to the top and selected them all again (by dragging selection tool and holding while it scrolls down and selects them all.  Is there a better way??)

6.  Used the "resize objects" button, selecting maximum width

7.  I think I did Alt-tab to another program to do something vaguely useful while waiting for it to finish

8.  Went back to LabVIEW.  It had finished.  Saved the VI

9.  It was taking a long time so I (again?) switched to another program for a bit

10.  Went back to LabVIEW.  Still busy and unresponsive (hourglass) but it was repainting itself

11.  Switched and waited some more

12.  Switched back.  LabVIEW still busy.  Clicked the upper-right-hand "x"

13.  It said not responding (I may have canceled, waited a minute, and tried again.  I don't remember)

14.  Told it to "End now"

15.  It took a long long time, LabVIEW had gone from my screen and task bar but eventually it gave me option of sending details to Microsoft.  I let it do so.

16.  Opened LabVIEW again.  It let me recover the VI.  The recovered VI had the cluster members widened, but there were no scrollbars on the front panel!! (see my related thread: http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/disappearing-scrollbars/m-p/1507054#M565012).  The VI properties have the relevant checkboxes checked.

Sooooo.....my two issues seem to be related.

B.

[BPerlman]

Bingo!  I've got a simple VI with which I can reproduce the bug consistently.  Here it is. 

I open it, click and drag and hold a loooong time to highlight all the elements of the cluster, and resize to maximum width.  Wait a while until it finishes.  Then save the VI and LabVIEW hangs (LabVIEW 8.6).

Some of the time when I open LabVIEW again after forcing it to close, it gives me the option of recovering the VI.  When I do, it is missing its scrollbars.

I haven't tried it on another computer yet...I have to see if/where we have another one with LabVIEW 8.6 (or even LabVIEW at all....).

B.

[BPerlman]

OK, I tried it on another computer and it also crashed.  Even though I had only highlighted up to 459 and not 512

I also managed to crash it with a different sequence of steps (highlight a bunch -- like 50 or 60 elements -- request resize to maximum, it didn't seem to work at all, tried to highlight again, and it hung).

For the record, my computer is running Windows XP and LabVIEW 8.6. 

The other computer I tried is running Windows 7 and LabVIEW 8.6.1.

B.

[johnsold]

I have an idea of what your problem is.  Your cluster is over 19000 pixels high.  LV sometimes has difficulties with front panels which exceed 16000 pixels.

I suggest that you make an array of the 512 messageQuadlets and put that into your cluster.  Then the cluster will have only 9 elements and should not be a problem.  Most likely it will be easier to handle the data as an array anyway.

This is also probably related to your scrollbar issue.

Lynn

[BPerlman]

I didn't choose the structure of this cluster.  It is part of an interface to a DLL.  In the past, when we've had structures in interfaces to DLLs we couldn't make them work and we had to add wrapper functions to the DLL with a different interface.  If I have to do that, I have to do that, but here I used LabVIEW's import function to make my wrapper VIs and it built this structure for me -- and it works (except on the front panel!), so it would be a shame to have to add functions to our DLL just to get around a screen limitation in LabVIEW (the DLL is used in other places as well, not just with our LabVIEW tools).

I also don't understand just how the import function put together this cluster, and why it works (the Call Library Function Node parameter is configured as "Adapt to Type" and "Handles by Value".  I've read the help on these options two or three times and still don't understand how they work), so I'm not sure how to modify it.

Anyway, I am a bit of a novice at LabVIEW (some experience but not a lot) and a complete novice at using structures in LabVIEW. 

Is there any way to lay out a large cluster so that it is not all vertical?

If I know that with a certain function the message is never this big (the function is explicitly getting a certain message type, which has a fixed, smaller, size), though the "C" "struct" is the same type, can I just delete the elements and pass that into the Call Library Function node?  When I tried to delete elements from the structure, I got errors in LabVIEW due to mismatches, but I didn't understand how to fix them.

Can anyone point me to the best resource for understanding better how to work with clusters?  I did the LabVIEW basics course a while ago; I can try to review that.  I find the help generally useful for finding out specific things but not for areas of understanding.

Thank you.

B.

[johnsold]

I cannot help with the .dll parts.  You may be able to reshape the cluster by grabbing the handles at the corners or centers of edges and dragging (turn off Autosizing). Then you can drag the controls to other positions.

Because of the size of the cluster, this may not work.  If it does not, try creating the cluster by hand.  Messy, but may be the only way.  Make 16 columns of 32 rows of the repeated control.  You can probably fit that on one screen. Make sure that you set the Cluster order to be the same as the oversized control so the external program can access the data properly.

Lynn

[BPerlman]

Thank you!  I found the autosize setting and turned it off, and then I was able to arrange the layout how I wanted.

Now...I have this same (horrid) cluster in a few VIs.......do I have to manually change the front panel of each or can I more easily propagate this change?

Thank you.

B.