TestStand Process Hangs on Wait Step

[david_jenkinson]

Here is the sequence where the wait step hung.  We have not seen the problem since, although in the latest revision I think we removed it.  But there are lots of other sequences that use the wait step, and as I said it is very rare but I think I saw this problem one additional time a few years ago that I chalked up to a fluke.  I may have called support about it though perhaps.

Dave

[David_Jackson]

I originally raised this issue and never go to the bottom of why it occurred.  Like david_jenkinson we observed it happening very intermittently and had to take similar steps to recover TestStand (for instance, shutting it down by task manager).  We have since moved onto TestStand 2016 (64-bit) running on a Windows 7, 64-bit machine.  We are still using Wait steps but we have not had this happen in the last 3 years so assumed that the root cause must have been fixed.  We were using TestStand 2010 and 2012 on Windows XP the last time we saw this, so the "fix" for us may have been any number of things (new TestStand version, new OS or even the combination of running the TestStand version on a new OS). What I have observed is that TestStand 64-bit running on our 64-bit machines has been very reliable and stable.

Sorry that is not much help to you now David J. I hope that you find a solution that works for you.

Regards,

David Jackson

[RoxtheFox]

Hi Dave,

Thank you for the sequence. Unfortunately, since I didn't have all the necessary components, I was not able to run the entire sequence file. I did comment out everything to make the sequence file run, but i was not able to reproduce the problem with the wait. I would recommend contacting NI support as soon as you see this problem come up again with the entire directory of your files, or narrow down your code as much as possible while the program still reproduces the behavior that you are seeing. 

If you see it with the code you provided for me, could you narrow it down or attach it's dependencies so that I can run the entire sequence? 

[RoxtheFox]

Hi David, 

I also want to add that if you do see the hang again, please get a dump file (.dmp) of the TestStand process. The process for that is shown here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/931673/how-to-create-a-user-mode-process-dump-file-in-windo...

Please upload the dump file here when you see that hanging again. If you can, please also create a service request as well when you see the hanging again. 

[david_jenkinson]

Will do thanks. 

[david_jenkinson]

BTW I did have my development machine running a bunch of wait steps for a few days recenlty, nothing replicated.  I think this is an extreme corner case, I will save that log next time.