BUGS Being Experienced with Windows 7 64-Bit

[leehack]

I have them on XP and W7 64-bit with V10, so I think it's an actinic specific issue.

[Sean Williams]

Sorry to buck the trend, but we have no real issues with V10 running on W7 64-bit at all.
Yet.
It's just as stable as it ever was at V8 or V9, but quicker

[saucysal]

Speed improvement

Thanks for replies. My IT bod has recommended that I move Actinic (V10) to a separate business server to our main one, so basically putting it on a separate pc acting as a server, and thinks it would help if that computer were running Windows 7 64 bit, from a performance point of view. My conclusion from comments on here is that generally speaking this should be OK.

Sarah

[brucet]

You should be fine with that arrangement. If you have the Actinic v10 software on the 64-bit PC, as well as the data, it can make use of the extra memory that 64-bit Windows can make available to it.

[Clive.Aspen]

I'm rather reluctant to post this.. because I'm an actinic fan.. but V10.0.3 (indeed all v10 versions) are not stable on my pc. (windows 7)

I am experiencing regular crashes at random times. There does not seem to be any common element. 'Actinic must close' a DMP file produced and the program has to shut down.

I am collecting DMP files by the dozen. However support will not look into a DMP file unless a specific issue can be identified.. and I cant find one. I reopen actinic and all seems well. Leaving me wondering why it crashed.

I also get the blank error box and beep on closing about 25% of the time, as others here do.

All in all its leaving me with a dodgy feeling of insecurity.. It just doesnt feel stable.. I used to manage a v7 store on an XP machine.. It never crashed...
I mean never. It was the most stable piece of software I ever had.

Reading through the forum, it seems there are more and more accounts of unusual behaviour from v10 all the time. Theres something just not quite right.. I dearly hope actinic can find out what the problem is and sort it, because it feels like the wheels are slowly coming off.. Please actinic.. focus on the errors people are reporting.. forget new features and releases and get back to the stable platform we all fell in love with. Stability first.. features second. People are chattering about this.

[brucet]

Clive, have your crashing issues been resolved yet? Did you contact support about them?

This kind of problem can be caused by some kind of data corruption or failure in the upgrade process, and can often be resolved on that level. Either way, we would certainly want to identify the cause and resolve it for you.

[Clive.Aspen]

Hi Bruce,

There is no data corruption.. the database compacts fine.
Its not an upgrade its a fresh install on a new Win7 machine.

Support have had loads of my DUMP.files but have no answers.
They say the DMP files dont show the reason for the crashes... Cant imagine what the point of them is then really. Feeling pretty sad about all this.. As I said before Actinic used to be so stable... what went wrong?

I dont believe this is an issue with my store, I believe its an issue with v10 and Win7.. But Actinic seem to be in denial.. If they confessed that something was wrong and they know it and are trying to sort it, we'd all be a lot happier.. but the onus is on us.. we're told its our problem.. which isnt true. Something has gone wrong.. and really needs to be sorted before people start jumping ship.

If you want to see the general feeling out there, google 'actinic review' and read the reviews from the reviewcentre.com, 3rd one down. Sad days.

[brucet]

I'm very sorry you've still got problems, I will follow this up internally and do my best to move it forward.

We have had a lot of feedback from customers about v10, and overall it has been our most stable and well-received release since v7. However a small number of customers have encountered some serious issues. We are trying to resolve these as quickly as resources and available information allow, however the ones that appear random are really hard to pin down. The .dmp files sometimes do provide crucial information, which is why we ask for them; but in your particular case, unfortunately they have not helped.

Of the issues we have already identified and fixed in v10, none has been specific to Windows 7. We are not aware of any issue reported by a Windows 7 user that was not also reported by a different user under XP or Vista, or was not reproducible on XP or Vista by ourselves. We have tested every release extensively on all three operating systems, and not found any difference.

We are certainly open to the possibility that there is a problem between v10 and Windows 7 that we have not identified yet. But we spent a lot of time on that and hunted pretty hard, without finding anything. So from my perspective, TBH it's become a bit like hunting the Yeti. People still call for it, and we haven't given up looking. But I don't really believe in it, and all the hard evidence says that it's not the place to invest our effort. ATM we're looking elsewhere, but open to looking again if new evidence appears.

I've seen the Reviewcentre site. However the reviews are not moderated, the site is populated by a large number of our competitors, and the overall views expressed there do not correspond with what we find elsewhere. So for those reasons I don't give it much credibility, TBH.

[Clive.Aspen]

Hi Bruce,

Well thanks for the reply, I'm happy to see you are not ignoring my concerns, or deleting my comments... but also a bit concerned that you liken the errors to hunting the yeti.. kind of implying theyre not real.

Take it from me, actinic is crashing randomly and beeping 'error warnings' that are just blank.. I'm not a computer newbie either.. I do know what I'm talking about.

So all I can ask is for other members of the forum to comment..
Is it just me?
Or are other members experiencing many more crashes than they did on previous versions?
Are people getting the blank error messages or crashes and just ignoring them?

I understand Bruce that some of your competitors might be posting bad reviews on reviewcentre, but if you read down you'll see they all mention similar issues to the ones I'm experiencing. I dont think its a coincidence and dont think you should just disregard all those reviews either.. People are starting to say that actinic is no longer stable and if I were running actinic I would address these issues head on. A stable platform is paramount... and as you know, in business reputation is everything.

[brucet]

I didn't mean to imply that your problems don't exist, they clearly do. Just that I doubt if they are particular to the Actinic v10 / Windows 7 combination. That's a link we have hunted for at length, without success. I'm open to the possibility that we've missed something. But every time we've explored that avenue it's turned out to be a red herring, and the problem actually lay elsewhere. Reading again what I wrote, I did mention the yeti hunt specifically in that context, and that was intentional.

I can assure you we are taking the issue of stability very seriously. We have fixed several user-reported crashes in v10, and we have a project currently running that is looking specifically at the remainder. Our goal is to eliminate them completely. We want our software to be 100% stable - or as close as we can reach, given the diversity of the environment that it runs on.

[brucet]

Could you email your web site address and support ticket number, to me at web@actinic.co.uk, please? I'm having trouble finding you in our system.

Do you know who you were dealing with in support?

[guccij]

I believe its an issue with v10 and Win7

Win7 64-Bit and v9 aren't happy bedfellows either. Swapping between order tabs takes an age, the system hangs constantly and we are forever restarting the software.

All this on a 4GB RAM Intel Core i3 @ 2.13GHz

The old XP machine never had any of these issues. Seriously. Never.

[leehack]

I'd be very surprised if there is no correlation between Vista and W7 issues and collectively they are not dwarfing the number of XP issues. General theme i have picked up from reading all problems is that XP was rock solid, Vista and W7 are sketchy, this would also tie in with how long it took to get actinic working successfully with Vista if indeed it is fully now.

I wrongly assumed at the start of this thread that the issues i experienced were W7 related as i rarely used my Vista laptop so never suffered anything on a Vista machine. I have an XP machine (3 years old) and a W7 both next to each other and operate them both during the day, they have the same software installed, if one of them is going to cause problems, it's almost always the W7 one, with some features of Kaspersky disabled, this has without a doubt improved. Why that is, is as much a mystery to me as everyone else.

It's a real shame because some things on W7 are so fast i actually think they've failed, snapshots a prime example, they are incredibly quicker for me. So much so that the problems i do get on W7, i can cope with because snapshots have reduced time spent on snapshots by 80-90%, it really has been that different.

I use Actinic on W7 daily now and i wouldn't change that, i just don't have that rock solid confidence that i have on XP. This has meant I just snapshot more, but because so much quicker, not an issue, probably a net gain.

[Sean Williams]

... if one of them is going to cause problems, it's almost always the W7 one, with some features of Kaspersky disabled,

Hmmm - could it be security software causing the apparently random issues?
We don't have any trouble at all with Vista, XP or W7, laptop or desktop.
All use ESET Smart Securty.

[leehack]

Possibly Sean yes, but Kaspersky is the world's most popular security package as far as I know and I have highlighted a number of times a link with problems, so presume that avenue has been checked thoroughly.