Problem(s) in background thread

[dwag]

I've received the following error message several times today while working in Flare: "Problem(s) in background thread: Could not find file ... etc." and variations thereof (always beginning with "Problem(s) in background thread").

At the moment, it has my project frozen and on the brink of crashing, along with a handful of unsaved stuff. If anyone can explain this error, I'd be most grateful.

[LTinker68]

Unfortunately, that's a fairly generic error. It's been mentioned in the forums in relation to indexes, using source control, using Feedback Server, and other things. Does it improve at all if you shut down and restart Flare?

[dwag]

Really appreciate the response. It began to occur so frequently yesterday that I gave up, shut it down and didn't bother restarting until this morning. I've got my fingers crossed. Only my opinion/experience, but over time, I'm finding the application to be rather moody.

Thanks, again.

[RamonS]

It is one of the many Flare error messages that are totally useless. I think that is the biggest weakness in Flare, both that it throws that many errors and that the error messages have absolutely nothing in them that hint to what went wrong, where it went wrong, what was expected, what was received, what are the likely causes, and what to do about it.
Seems that usability and error handling is something that doesn't get covered in CS majors....plus the developer arrogance that leads the developers to not care about users and have support deal with garbage like this. The sad thing is that it might not even be caused by a any code from MadCap, but by the runtime Flare uses.

[dwag]

Thanks, Ramon. Unfortunately, the error is right back at it this morning. Another writer working on the same project was getting the same error all day yesterday but says things are okay so far today. I really hate to bother support with this nebulous issue, but I don't know where else to turn. Bottom line is, I've got miles to go and promises to keep, and I don't need Flare dropping obstacles in my path.

Thanks, again.

[RamonS]

I'd still drop support a line.

[dwag]

But before I do that, I'm wondering: a few of the error messages indeed have included the names of topic files in the project. I checked with one of the other writers, who recently has been setting up multiple levels in her index entries. In checking a few of them randomly, I'm noticing spaces after some of the colons. Although the output shows the levels the way she intended them to show, could it be the spaces are causing the problem? A few posts ago, I believe Lisa mentioned indexing as a potential culprit. Before I contact support (seriously, I've lost a fair amount of ground since yesterday trying to solve this thing), I'm wondering whether it'd make sense to comb the project for multiple-level index entries and eliminate all spaces after colons.

[LTinker68]

If I remember support's response in a related thread (which I can't find at the moment), the suggestion was to open the Index Explorer and see if you could find any empty index entries (i.e., a term not pointing to any topics) or badly formed index terms. I can't remember much more than that, but you could maybe start with that.

[dwag]

Thanks, Lisa. Did what you suggested. Found a few minor irregularities, but don't think any turned out to be the devil behind the detail. Spent some of yesterday cleaning up the spaces after colons and haven't seen an error message since then. Got my fingers crossed.