My Windows 7 doesn't like actinic, Any ideas

[gcamley]

This is not a simple problem to identify.

Due to a Win7 problem with running 32bit processes on a 64 bit OS the true exception is 'swallowed' which leads to a secondary exception . We have found different problems resulting in the same secondary exception which means different crashes actually all look the same.

Microsoft have posted a work round but it does not work for everybody, yes you guessed, it doesn't work for us. I have been testing it today and get different random crashes so we are worse off.

We are investigating alternative methods of getting to the route cause of this resolution problem which may mean providing a debug version of the application which will be able to show the primary as well as the secondary exception.

[Jyan]

My Windows 7 64bit PC suddenly slowed down for Actinic v10 in the last week (4 hour uploads!). I believe it was to do with Access\Office 2010 on same PC, an Access database started running very slowly as well. So I re-installed Office from scratch and Actinic is now back to original speed. I've not done any Windows updates for Office yet, I suspect a recent update caused the problem for me, the slow-down happened about 10/12/11 so just need to identify the update that slowed everything. If I find out I will post back.

[leehack]

My W7 machine has dual graphic cards for 4 monitor setup, just to add something graphic related into the mix. I can often be doing something in actinic, it freezes, screen goes funny. I either then get a message that card has recovered from a malfunction and can carry on as normal or whole thing crashes. I only ever seem to get these problems when actinic is open, i dont ever recall it having crashed without actinic open. That could be a red herring though as 90% of the time i am at that machine actinic is naturally open anyway.

[jhth]

This is not a simple problem to identify.

Due to a Win7 problem with running 32bit processes on a 64 bit OS the true exception is 'swallowed' which leads to a secondary exception . We have found different problems resulting in the same secondary exception which means different crashes actually all look the same.

Microsoft have posted a work round but it does not work for everybody, yes you guessed, it doesn't work for us. I have been testing it today and get different random crashes so we are worse off.

We are investigating alternative methods of getting to the route cause of this resolution problem which may mean providing a debug version of the application which will be able to show the primary as well as the secondary exception.

Any chance of being a Guinea Pig for you? Need a solution as Actininc is almost unworkable at the moment

[gcamley]

Apologies for the delay, the problem is quite complex to solve.

I expect to have a version of 11.0.1 ready by the middle of this week which will trap and log the underlying error.

When it is ready I would like several customers that consistently reproduce the problem to install the program, reproduce the crash, send me the crash dumps and then reinstall the official 11.0.1 until have fixed the underlying problem.

The 2 requirements for assisting with the resolution of the problem will be:-

- running Actinic 11.0.1
- easily able to reproduce the crash

I hope to catch this at the first attempt but it may be necessary to make a second build that produces a more detailed dump.

[jeffnurse]

Testing

Sounds like a positive step and very welcome as this has been so frustrating.

I am happy to test it on my laptop.
Jeff

[Hendrik]

This thread is quite worrying. We currently run Actinic version 9 on a couple of fairly elderly XP machines. We are having the whole site redesigned in v11, and we plan to move over to new machines running Windows 7 at that point.

Seems like we should put these plans on hold for now.

Would it be better to go with the 32 bit version of Windows 7?

Hendrik

[gcamley]

This thread is quite worrying. We currently run Actinic version 9 on a couple of fairly elderly XP machines. We are having the whole site redesigned in v11, and we plan to move over to new machines running Windows 7 at that point.

Seems like we should put these plans on hold for now.

Would it be better to go with the 32 bit version of Windows 7?

Hendrik

There are 2 problems here. the first is that users of new x64 win 7 boxes are having problems with resolutions. It is not 100% certain that this problem is x64 but I'm not yet aware of any x86 OS's with the resolution problem. It may well be x64 screen driver(s) that are causing the problem.

The second problem is most definitely an x64 problem in that win32 C++ applications written with Visual Studio 2005 or later cannot accurately give crash dumps in certain circumstances when run on an x64 OS. This is due to a technical problem which Microsoft say they cannot resolve however there is a way round the problem which is what i'm currently developing.

Many people are able to run Actinic quite successfully on Win7 x64 which further confirms my belief that the resolution problem is not specifically Actinic but if we can get an accurate dump we may be able to work round the problem.

[kev67]

I'm running the latest V10 on Windows 7/64 and the Actinic program is installed within C/programs/X86 and when I'm editing the website, I can't even read the text. It's that small, it's really bad

Online it's fine, but I can't find a way to make the text bigger. I've tried the typical DPI settings which is utter useless

Is there anyway to make it bigger without me having to buy the biggest magnifying glass?

thanks

[jeffnurse]

There are 2 problems here. the first is that users of new x64 win 7 boxes are having problems with resolutions. It is not 100% certain that this problem is x64 but I'm not yet aware of any x86 OS's with the resolution problem. It may well be x64 screen driver(s) that are causing the problem.

The second problem is most definitely an x64 problem in that win32 C++ applications written with Visual Studio 2005 or later cannot accurately give crash dumps in certain circumstances when run on an x64 OS. This is due to a technical problem which Microsoft say they cannot resolve however there is a way round the problem which is what i'm currently developing.

Many people are able to run Actinic quite successfully on Win7 x64 which further confirms my belief that the resolution problem is not specifically Actinic but if we can get an accurate dump we may be able to work round the problem.

Gordon, just wondered how this is progressing? I haven't been able to use Actinic on my new laptop which I bought in June!! Appreciate the depth of the problem but really need a solution please. Jeff

[gcamley]

I have the work round to the error handling problem working in principal but not as well as it needs to.

I hope today to complete the work to be able to provide a special build to determine the underlying resolution crash.

[jamesbrenan]

I have had this problem ever since I installed V11.1 on my new HPZ10 desktop in November. Windows 7 64. I find it very frustrating and there is no solution except to have the content tab open and either product details open or the page preview visible. It makes creating a new product very laborious. When I installed Actinic on my new PC I imported a snapshot taken from the old PC and I wonder if that might have something to do with it?

[gcamley]

I have had this problem ever since I installed V11.1 on my new HPZ10 desktop in November. Windows 7 64. I find it very frustrating and there is no solution except to have the content tab open and either product details open or the page preview visible. It makes creating a new product very laborious. When I installed Actinic on my new PC I imported a snapshot taken from the old PC and I wonder if that might have something to do with it?

I have built a special build of Actinic 11.0.1 which is intended to try to find the underlying error and create a crash dump.

Let me know if you are willing to assist in finding the problem by installing the special build and I will send you the necessary instructions.

[Hendrik]

I know this is widening the scope of the thread a little, but here goes...

Up to now I have run Actinic on my desktop PC, which was fairly powerful when I bought it (it's nickname on the network is 'beast'). However, as well as Actinic, I am running Adobe Photoshop, video editing software, and a bunch of other stuff.

I am planning to buy a new computer, and switch to Windows 7, and I was wondering if I would be better buying a middle of the road machine, and basically just running Actinic on it; then getting a second machine to do all the other stuff.

I do not know if this would help the Actinic/Windows 7 problem at all, but I would probably spend less time rebooting the machine (which brings down the order processing machine as well).

Is this the way that other people run things, or do people tend to have everything on one machine?

Hendrik

[Duncan Rounding]

I think what you are suggesting is a good idea.

The spec of machine required for Actinic will depend a lot on the number and complexity of your products as well as the volume of orders you are processing. A Win7 32bit i7 PC with 4 Gb of memory and raid and/or a network NAS or cloud drive for backup should be fine for most people.

For video and large photoshop file editing you may need something with more meat.