Flare 11.1 crash on svn-bound project 1000, 1001, 1026

[kkelleher]

I've been having a pretty consistent Flare crash for the last few weeks, but today I think I finally resolved it. I'm posting this in hopes that it saves someone else time and frustration

Ever since I upgraded my Flare instance to 11.1, Flare was crashing regularly when I tried to load a project that was bound to source control (Subversion). I opened the FLPRJ, Flare prompted me to get the latest version, and regardless of what I chose, the CPU usage jumped to over 80%-90% and Flare froze. Eventually, Flare crashed. This happened about 75% of the time when I opened a project bound to svn (which is of course all of my projects). It never happened in unbound test projects. I tried uninstall/reinstall of Flare, but the problem persisted.

In my Windows Event Viewer, I saw related errors regarding Flare and .Net: Event IDs 1000, 1001, and 1026. On this forum, I saw that earlier versions of Flare have thrown these same errors in the past (such as v9x and v10x) (they're baaa-aaack...).

Event ID 1000 mentions KERNELBASE.dll, which got me thinking about DLL dependencies, so on a whim, I cleared out my C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local\Temp directory, and it seems to have solved the Flare crash problem. I have successfully loaded my projects every time I've tried since clearing out the temp files, so I think it has to be fixed.

My hunch is that clearing out the temp directory will only fix *some* of the underlying causes of Event IDs 1000, 1001, and 1026, since they're so generic, but it's worth a shot if you're having problems and see those in the log.

Edit: This seems to have fixed my error momentarily, but it came right back a couple hours later. Clearing out the temp directory once again seems to have helped, but I'm guessing I'll need to do it a couple times again for this workaround to help. I've got a ticket open with MadCap Tech Support.

Thanks,

Kristen

[Nita Beck]

Kristen, thanks for posting. This is very interesting to me. I've had huge performance issues with Flare 11 and SVN, issues that MadCap tech support hasn't been able to reproduce. It's driving me batty. I've gotten to the point where I work disconnected from the SVN server and then later, I reconnect and check stuff in. If I try to work connected to the SVN server, Flare 11 seems to want to constantly repaint its windows. It'll go into Lala Land (aka become unresponsive) and I sometimes wait *many minutes* for it to right itself, which is really frustrating if the action I had done right before it went nutty was merely to backspace one position... And I've also been watching the CPU usage and the memory usage. I've seen the memory usage triple, quadruple...

[kkelleher]

I know I claimed this before, but I think this time I really have solved my particular 100/1001/1026 crashes, with lots of help from MadCap Technical Support (thanks, Marvin!).

The short story is that I can no longer reproduce the error after having another user log into my machine with their credentials, then logging back into Windows as myself.

The long answer is likely superstitious nonsense, to which you probably needn't subject yourself; it's in the P.S. to this post.

Thanks,

Kristen

P.S. The reference to KERNELBASE.dll in the description of my Event ID 1000 led us to the idea that there was something wrong with my Windows user profile (http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... ed8d70f749). To test that, MadCap had me get another user to login to my machine with their own credentials. If the problem didn't occur for the other user, we could conclude that it was indeed a corrupt user profile. While logged in as a different user, I wasn't able to trigger the event having tried nearly 20 different projects. So I logged back into windows as myself, thinking I would need to replace or repair my user profile (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... =windows-7). But being myself, I felt the need to test Flare without taking further steps. And now, I can't reproduce the crash, again having tried nearly 20 different projects.

[kkelleher]

Another fine theory shot down by data..... the problem has reared its ugly head once again. I'll let you know if I ever get resolution on this issue.

Thanks,

Kristen

[MattyQ]

...Flare 11 seems to want to constantly repaint its windows. It'll go into Lala Land (aka become unresponsive) and I sometimes wait *many minutes* for it to right itself, which is really frustrating if the action I had done right before it went nutty was merely to backspace one position...

Hi, Nita -- I've run into a similar problem myself when using Flare 11 with TFS, especially when it's trying to reconcile files in one of the directories (Content Explorer or Project Organizer directories, rather, usually) that aren't yet source controlled. As a workaround, if I close the Project Organizer, the Content Explorer, and the File List windows (or panes or wherever one has them dragged to/attached), I find that performance returns to normal, but I see the following (fairly sure, unrelated) error:

uierror.png

I'd be curious if you've tried a similar workaround with SVN with any results?

That said, I'm not sure you can call closing all the navigation panes a "workaround," in retrospect.

[kkelleher]

I know I claimed this before, but I think this time I really have solved my particular 100/1001/1026 crashes...

At the risk of being wrong yet again, I really, really think I found a workaround for this issue. I was thinking about other general troubleshooting advice I've heard for Flare. One thing people sometimes recommend is deleting some of the auto-generated content in the project's folder (the Analyzer, Output, and FileSync folders). Since I was only having problems with projects in source control, I thought maybe deleting that FileSync folder would prevent the crash. So I started deleting it every time I saw it before I opened a project bound to SVN. Sure enough, the frequent crashing has stopped altogether.

Thanks to all who have posted the suggestion to delete the FileSync folder in other threads -- like Msquared.

-Kristen

[Nita Beck]

Kristen, that is *very* interesting. I can't even figure why I have FileSync folders in my SVN-bound projects at all anyway, as I don't use Flare's External Resources feature and I've always thought that the FileSync folder supposedly appears only when one uses External Resources. I'll try your hunch myself and see if it makes any difference for me.

[kkelleher]

I can't even figure why I have FileSync folders in my SVN-bound projects at all anyway...

I'm right there with you, Nita. We don't use external resources, either. Please let me know if this helps your perfromance problems!

Thanks,

Kristen

[kkelleher]

I can't even figure why I have FileSync folders in my SVN-bound projects at all anyway...

I'm right there with you, Nita. We don't use external resources, either.

Another follow-up on this: I initially had problems installing the 11.1.2 patch, and put it on the back burner during the holidays. A few days ago, I finally got it installed. Soon after, I noticed that the projects I had opened with 11.1.2 each had a FileSync folder.

So my current theory (just *waiting* to be shot down by data) is that the FileSync folder is now also used when you 'upgrade' a project to a new version. I'm just deleting them every time I see them, so I have no idea if the ones created during upgrade from v11.1.1 -> 11.1.2 cause the hang problem I was having after upgrading from 11.1.0 -> 11.1.1

Thanks,

Kristen