My Windows 7 doesn't like actinic, Any ideas

[jeffnurse]

11.01.1 Update

Hey Ton,

11.0.1 was just released, can you try that and let me know how you get on please. I'll look into the support ticket when I get your feedback.

Fingers crossed.

Ben

Made no difference to my situation - sorry.
Jeff

[Benjamin Dyer]

OK thanks for the feedback. It seems very odd and as Norman suggest might be down to hardware, but until we are sure we will continue to investigate. Our third line support team are picking up all open tickets.

[jhth]

Brand new PC Actinic pauses all the time

Have a brand spanky new PC win7 64 bit. 24GB of RAM, High end video card. BEAST of a machine for video editing.

Actinic pauses for 10-15 seconds between each screen. Have tried 4 re-installs. Have put the install & site directory on 7kRPM, 10KRPM and solid state disks, all exhibit the same delays.

Have tried running under a number of different emulation types, all exhibit the same delays.

Not running any anti-virus or firewall

Back on old windows 32 box all is fine.

VERY FRUSTRATING!!!

J/.

[leehack]

Any external scripts or content?

[Mike Hughes]

This sounds like a different problem to the others in this thread as their problem is Actinic crashing completely.

When you say 'between each screen' is this when moving around / editing stuff on the content tree? If so the tips here in the Knowledge base might help (How to improve the performance of Actinic’s content tab)

http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=45309

Although it is odd that there's no problems with your other machine? Is that Windows 7 too?

Mike

[malbro]

Have a brand spanky new PC win7 64 bit. 24GB of RAM, High end video card. BEAST of a machine for video editing.

Actinic pauses for 10-15 seconds between each screen. Have tried 4 re-installs. Have put the install & site directory on 7kRPM, 10KRPM and solid state disks, all exhibit the same delays.

Have tried running under a number of different emulation types, all exhibit the same delays.

J/.

I have been using Windows 7x64 on a Dell Workstation twin 4 core cpus and 12Gb ram for over two years now with Actinic 8/9/10 and 11 with a variety of sites from customers without getting this problem. Occasionally I see delays when changing screens but not 10 to 15 seconds, and the software is certainly a lot quicker than on a similar XP based machine (less RAM) where I do notice the delays.

[gcamley]

I have been looking at the problem that Ton reported to Actinic Support.

The dump file shows a problem which we have found to be related to screen resolutions. We do not yet have a fix for this as we have not been able to reproduce the problem in-house suggesting it is connected with the hardware as well as the resolution.

We do have a work round that has worked for other customers; simply reduce the screen resolution.

To help with getting to the bottom of the underlying problem I would be grateful if anybody that finds reducing the screen resolution fixes similar crashes could attach to this thread the dump file (usually found in the installation folder) and post details of which resolution they were using and which resolution worked and the details of the graphics card.

[Mike Hughes]

Hi Gordon,

Good you could join the discussion on this.

We do have a work round that has worked for other customers; simply reduce the screen resolution.

Did you see the recent postings from Jeff Nurse on this?

However, for some work in the evenings - I reinstalled a snapshot and tried to work on my laptop again at 1024 x 768 when default is 1366 x 768. Not ideal but able to get some stuff done (if I revert to 1366 x 768 Actinic just crashes when I select a second product).

Now today, it has started crashing at 1024 x 768 too - rendering it impossible to work on a £900 laptop that I bought primarily to work with Actinic.

The work around might not be as reliable as you would hope.

Mike

[gcamley]

The work around might not be as reliable as you would hope.

Mike

Unfortunately it does look to be the case although I'm not aware of the work round failing for anybody else yet.

Given that v10 has been around for some time but this problem has only started comparatively recently then I suspect it has to be due to either new hardware or software updates.

One possibility due to the timing and the gradual increase in reports of this problem is IE9. The content preview uses controls that in turn use the IE libraries. A problem in IE can lead to a problem in Actinic.

I would be interested to know if the customers experiencing this problem could provide me with:-

• a dump file from the installation folder (if not already done so)
• IE version on the PC/Laptop
• screen resolution that fails
• screen resolution that works

The information may be posted to this thread with the dump file attached or sent to support for my attention quoting ref AC11-2012.

[guccij]

Just to add my comments: am running v10 on a 64 bit W7 PC, not laptop. Screen resolution is 1920 x 1080. External scripts are dealt with using the IsNotPreview code.

Actinic crashes 19 times out of 20 when opening the New Order tab.

Swapping between Pending and Completed tabs is so slow as to be unusable. BUT, switching to the Pending & Completed tab works fine. As a result we never use the Completed tab.

Changing the resolution makes no difference to the crashes or the speed issues.

Internet Explorer (which I never use but it's on this machine) is 9.0.8112.16421 64-bit edition.

[gcamley]

Update on the investigation

The dumps that have been reported for the screen resolution problem are misleading due to a bug in the OS which specifically affects Win7 x64. As a consequence of the bug the wrong error is being reported hiding the real problem. This makes analysis of the problem extremely difficult.

We have also encountered a report that a nVidia OpenGL driver had a bug which may be relevant. The bug is apparently fixed in their latest drivers.

Actinic are investigating a Microsoft supplied work round that will enable the process to report the correct error so that we can investigate the resolution problem further.

Unfortunately neither myself or other developers have been able to reproduce the resolution crash so it may be that we will be asking customers with this problem to install a special build of Actinic to help get to the bottom of the problem more quickly.

I hope to have further news before the weekend.

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

Have a brand spanky new PC win7 64 bit. 24GB of RAM, High end video card. BEAST of a machine for video editing.

Actinic pauses for 10-15 seconds between each screen. Have tried 4 re-installs. Have put the install & site directory on 7kRPM, 10KRPM and solid state disks, all exhibit the same delays.

Have tried running under a number of different emulation types, all exhibit the same delays.

It might be worth changing the last selected tab in the Design view to see if that makes any difference.
I use V9 and Actinic started acting very slowly when processing orders recently and eventually discovered that it was only slow if the 'Properties' tab was selected in Design view, despite the fact I was on the Orders tab. The properties tab is particularly slow because I have Normans 'Multiple Product Images' addon and have extended it to work with 25 images.

I am not sure why Actinic should be processing anything to do with the Design tab while I am on the Orders tab but it does, as if I switch back the design tab and change from the 'Properties' tab to 'General' the speed problem goes away and everything is fine again.

[jeffnurse]

Update on the investigation

The dumps that have been reported for the screen resolution problem are misleading due to a bug in the OS which specifically affects Win7 x64. As a consequence of the bug the wrong error is being reported hiding the real problem. This makes analysis of the problem extremely difficult.

We have also encountered a report that a nVidia OpenGL driver had a bug which may be relevant. The bug is apparently fixed in their latest drivers.

Actinic are investigating a Microsoft supplied work round that will enable the process to report the correct error so that we can investigate the resolution problem further.

Unfortunately neither myself or other developers have been able to reproduce the resolution crash so it may be that we will be asking customers with this problem to install a special build of Actinic to help get to the bottom of the problem more quickly.

I hope to have further news before the weekend.

Actinic Support have twice had remote access to my laptop and this can be arranged again if it helps. For the record, I have switchable hybrid graphics - on board and with Radeon Card too.
Jeff

[ton]

In case anyone else finds the same when I tried switching to a lower resolution from 1600x900 to 1280x720 it made no difference but support had been on last week/the week before looking for some files for some reason i tried the lower resolution again and I noticed that I could reduce the resolution even further down to 800x600 and it worked (mind you to hard to navigate the programme) but it didnt crash.

[Mike Hughes]

If you have this problem the quickest route to a solution will be to ask Actinic for their special build so they can identify what's causing this and issue a fix.

I know it doesn't solve the immediate problem here and now, but I'm sure everyone who's suffering must want to get it fixed.

Mike