IDE Error when editing a Distribution (builder)

[gvan]

CVI (8.5, on Vista) crash quite frequently when I open the Distribution editor and then select the "Files" tab.

I haven't spent the time to find the exact steps (if there are any) to make it crash repeatably, but it has been happening about 1 in every 3 times that I open the editor.

It seems to be running into errors finding/opening the bmp image files that it puts as icons in the tree control of the files lists.  Sometimes I get a "...custom control error" (sorry, I didn't write down the exact wording).  There are always a few "error loading bmp file" errors and then the application may or may not say open.  If it does say open it is in a seemingly perpetual state of error message popups.

On a related IDE note, I also get frequent file access errors when I try to save files (doesn't matter what kind) in the CVI editor.  Usually the access error goes away after a few trys but sometimes it persists for several minutes or more.  While this mostly only annoying, I have better things to do then wait around for several minutes in order to save my code. (which I do by habit every 15 secs or so)  In times where it lasts more than five minutes, I start to get anxious about losing work.

I can knock CVI out of its bogus file access error state if I open the locked file in some other editor and then save it (opening only does not work). CVI prompts me that the file contents have change and then allows me to overwrite the copy on disk and save again.  Since I can always open the file in any other editor, I am blaming CVI and not Vista for prompting me with an incorrect file access error. 

Greg

Message Edited by gvan on 01-14-2008 04:25 PM

[JettR]

Hey Greg,

Have you always seen this problem on your Vista machine after you first installed CVI 8.5? Also, are you the administrator of the computer?  If so, we can try repairing the CVI installation on your machine (firewalls and antivirus disabled).   If that does not work, what other software do you have loaded on this machine?   I look forward to hearing how the repair goes.

As for the icons you are having trouble with, are they Vista compliant (very large icons or PNG compressed) icons?  If so, we can replace CVI’s shipped resource compiler with the one from Windows SDK released for Vista.  You can find the specific procedure in the 8.5 Readme that installed with CVI (Start » Programs » National Instruments » LabWindows CVI 8.5 » LabWindows CVI 8.5 Readme).

[gvan]

Jett,

I think you've misunderstood my problem/bug with the Application Builder.  The icons that cause the errors (or rather produce the error messages, though may not be the real cause) are not mine.  They are the icons/bmps that the CVI application uses in the file tree control of the application builder tool. Build >> Distributions >>Edit [name]  ... <tab>Files .   The problem does not happen all the time so I can still use the resource complier I just wanted to post the bug since it does cause a CVI to fail spectacularly when it happens.   I do not yet know how to create the problem repeatably, I can find a series of steps that does it I will post it.  I have seen this problem before on an XP machine, but I can't remember if I was running 8.1 or 8.5 Beta.

As for the file access errors, I have admin access, user access controls turned disabled, no uses access or file security what so ever.  I my mind, the key point here is that CVI is the only application that seems to have any problems with file access on my machine.  We also aren't taking about any sort of secure windows files or files in restricted directories that I could see causing problems.  These are the source files that CVI has created.  The are in a generic (non-user specific) folder on a local partition.  The only other application that my ,machine that might access the files at the same time could be Google Apps indexing tool or Vista file indexing service. However, regardless of what else is running on my machine, I should never get a consistent file access error from CVI only... surely if there was a problem with Vista I would have similar problems in other applications.  More likely I think CVI is incorrectly interpreting something as a file access error and/or not properly re-trying to save the file in persistent cases.  In cases where the error is persistent, I can always open the file ANY other text editor.  Again, this is not a fatal error.  I can work with it, but wanted to post it so that it is known. 

Greg

[JettR]

Hey Greg,

Thank you for such a thorough response.  If you can find a specific set of steps that causes any of these issues, please post back with the procedure.  We count on good feedback like this to make our products better.

[gvan]

I've recorded the Edit Active Distribution errors this time just to make this post complete.

When I select the "Files" tab I sometimes (repeatable cause unknown) get the following errors.

Multiple instances of...

"Bitmap is invalid."

"Error occured while populating tab"

"Custom control callback raised an execption"

After clearing all of the error boxes, none of the tree controls are populated and the cursor is stuck in a waiting state.  I can sometimes close Distribution panel (if CVI doesn't crash) but it will continue to display these errors if I go back to the panel until I restart CVI.

Message Edited by gvan on 01-16-2008 02:09 PM

Message Edited by gvan on 01-16-2008 02:11 PM

[wally_666]

I seem to be able to trigger this bug whenever I've  added a file to the distribution manually (for example image jpegs) and laterI delete the added file, this error pops up after and "out of memory error" after it seemingly tries to search all my hard drives for the missing file.

Maybe another clue will help towards a solution.

Qutting and restarting CVI after removing the missing file from the list is the only way I've found to clear it and complete the distribute edit.

I think the new distribution builder/installer is a major step backwards.  All pain, no gain that I can see anywhere.

[menchar]

Hah - I have been complaining about it off and on for years now.  They did fix up a few things with it, but it is funky, no doubt.  NI seems to have a bit of an attitude about it as well.

We get burned all the time with hard links to installation specific files.  We now add most everything to the project so that it will relocate with the project and not break hard links to files that don't exist.  This is an insidious problem and we have been burned time and again - I preach at the developers to watch for this but they don't listen / understand.  We check out a project from configuration cotrol and try to build it on a different PC and all the hard links break (red font).  But until you try the build on a different machine, you often don't realize what you've done.

They did finally fix it up so you can import registry keys instead of being forced to create each and every key and value manually.

I think the tool GUI is very cramped and you can't resize the panel.   Lots of functionality is hidden in context menus.  The semantic of some of the panes is non-obvious and you are forced to engage in lengthy trial and error exercises to figure out what's happening.

Menchar

[JettR]

Hello Menchar,

It sounds like you have some good feedback to give.  We greatly appreciate when we get product feedback from customers on new feature they would like to see or suggestions on how to make current features better.  You can find the product suggestion page at the Product Suggestion Center.  Let us know if you have any questions.  Have a great day!

[Erez_Farhi]

Hi all,

I've the same problem on XP from version 8 or 8.1

Now I'm using CVI 8.5 without any luck, with the same bug.

[Mert_A.]

We have not been able to reproduce this problem, which makes it difficult to debug. If you would be willing to do a little back-and-forth debug DLL and log file trading, we should be able to figure out just where the errors are originating from and fix them (or at least better handle them) for the next release. I'm posting an instrumented build of the CVI 8.5 IDE DLL to our FTP site. The modified version writes a log file that can provide vital information. If you could backup and replace the cvi.dll in your CVI directory, run CVI, reproduce the issue, then post the resulting log file back to this thread, I'll take a look. There's a README zipped with the DLL that gives the details.

Thanks.

Mert A.
National Instruments