Help please

[EdHarrison]

Over a month now and no progress. I have provided snapshots, error logs and often I get no reply on the ticket for days and days. Very disappointed 365 customer.

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Ed, That's disappointing.

Have Sellerdeck told you if they can reproduce the problem? If they can then I'd expect them to able to find what's causing it.

Mike

[EdHarrison]

Hi Mike,
So far no they have not reproduced the issue but it is more than coincedence they blocked my IP dues to a password (email) error, they have unblocked it but it is only since then the upload issues have come about, if it is a hosting issue with my IP they will not be able to reptoduce it unless through my IP - (I am hosted with them to).

As this only happens when uploading (as in connecting to their server) I believe this must be related

[Mike Hughes]

Is there any way you could confirm it's an IP related issue by trying to upload from a different IP? Maybe a neighbouring business or from home or maybe even via a VPN?

I suspect part of the problem is that the developer and hosting sides of the business are probably unable to say for sure where the issue lies.

And if I remember rightly I think most broadband connections have an IP assigned on connection rather than a fixed one (unless your paying extra for it). So turning off and restarting your router (or DSL modem if you have one) could well give you a different IP address.

[EdHarrison]

Unfortunately over two months and no fix. The crashes on upload are more frequent now.
It started crashing on generating marketing lists to the point it would not pass that stage at all, I have had to disable also bought a useful tool sadly.

Support are unable to replicate the crashes but they only have support snapshots which could point to orders or a database issue only present in the full snapshots.

I am very concerned it will simply get to a point where it will not publish to web, catastrophic for an ecommerce business.

V18.12 swift on a recent Windows 10 desktop PC, I do have 1700 products, 53k orders spanning over a decade but support assured me that should not be a cause.

To recap I get crashes when publishing to web, it simply stops and says not responding, it has to be closed at that point. No crash report is ever created. This can happen several times before it successfully uploads, it is consuming valuable time and very stressful.

Any help or ideas welcomed

[Goz]

Have you re-run SellerDeck installation and selected the Repair option? It may be some software is out of kilter.


If that doesn't fix it then do you have multi-site?

If so, it might be worth setting up another SD instance and loading a recent backup into it and putting it into test mode. Then delete and purge all of the orders and try uploading. This may identify if there is a corrupt order causing the crashes.

[EdHarrison]

Thanks Goz, I would have hoped support for the cost would have been capable of finding the issue by now. I don't have multi site.
In all honesty I worry about Tinkering with it.
interesting about reinstallation, I didn't know that was possible without uninstalling it...which in the past I found troublesome as bits were still left on the drive.

I did start removing some older orders today but it had a bit of a fit. In batches I removed about 3000 deleting then purging then compacting...but on the next retrieve orders it kept crashing trying to update all the old orders I'd deleted and purged. After a few attempts it finally sorted itself out.

Back in 2014 I think, I got Andy codepath to import all my descriptions, images and URL's ect into a fresh sellerdeck installation to get a fresh start as I'd started on v8 or 9.
I may look at that option again.

[Buzby]

Out of interest Ed, have Sellerdeck been giving you updates on your issue that may help you diagnose, or has it been complete silence?

When I have issues I make loads of different clone sites and change different things on each to try and locate the issue. Might be worth asking if Sellerdeck would allow you a mult site license so you could try different things.

We are also experiencing issues with Sellerdeck freezing, failing backups and frequent crashes. We are going to upgrade the latest version on a brand new pc in the hope that it is resolved.

[EdHarrison]

Hi Jason,
they have asked for error reports and support snapshots ect but often there are long gaps between replies sometimes weeks.

My biggest fear is that if this were to prevent me uploading at all, I would simply have lost my business after this long without a fix.

I know nothing is perfect and since v9 I have had crashes which is acceptable to a level, but this is much worse and sometimes it will not publish after several attempts. Yesterday for example I had to disable also bought in marketing to get it to upload at all. The nature of my business requires me to upload at least few times a day to adjust stock availability to avoid selling what has sold out.

Support has been hit and miss in recent years but there is still some excellent help, I had a problem albeit small Xmas eve and Gary sorted it that day brilliantly. Sadly this issue has dragged on months with little or no progress. The sellerdeck website really pushes the expert help and "disaster recovery" reassurance points but this experience has me worried. I have been a 365 subscriber for years to avoid exactly this kind of anxiety.

[Goz]

In my experience, given that you've had spurious crashes since V9, I would say that there is some corruption to the data.

I have a client who had a very similar problem - also with over 10 years of orders on the system - and it came down to a corrupt order from a very long time ago.

I used MS Access to open a backup of the SD database and then exported the order tables to Excel and trawled through them to look for anything that looked unusual. Got there in the end.

He still has occasional crashes but nothing like he had.

Whereas one of my own sites has over 10 years of orders and it very rarely crashes.

[EdHarrison]

I have had a few toxic orders over the years with no payments at all that had to be deleted to stop crashes so quite possibly the case.
53k orders is a lot to look at though!
It crashes on also bought generation and I assume that is linked to the order database to get its data from, interesting thank you.
It would also explain why support cannot replicate crashes with support snapshots that have no orders in them.
could even be a customer account....

Sadly despite my plea for help to support its been another 5 days since hearing anything.