Version 6 don't work anymore since version 6.0.0.41

NewRaven · July 14, 2012, 07:36:12 AM

Hi there

I'm a longtime user of Process Lasso Pro and since I had no problems with development versions in the past, I just tried version 6. It worked fine on my machine (Windows 7 x64, german) until version 6.0.0.41. And in 6.0.0.42 its getting even worse...

In 6.0.0.41 everything in the background worked (i.e. the governor) but the UI made me a real hard time. If I clicked on anything within it (it doesn't care if it was a process, some menu entry or anything) I got a non responding window... sometimes, it responds after 2 minutes or so, sometimes I needed to kill the task after more than 10 minutes. My system isn't getting unresponsive or anything at all at that time, just the process lasso gui window grayed out and wasn't working. After restarting ProcessLasso.exe everything went smooth as long as I didn't try to do anything in the GUI again.

However... as with 6.0.0.42, the Governor doesn't even start when the GUI (ProcessLasso.exe) is started (i.e. on windows start). The ProcessLasso.exe still runs, but neither has it a systray icon nor is there any way to switch to the GUI window (probably cause its simply not there and this is a kind of a zombie process). If I manually start the ProcessGovernor.exe and then run the GUI ProcessLasso.exe, still absolutely nothing does happen. Both processes are running, but neither I get the UI to show up (and there is still no systray icon) nor is the core working (at least I feel it that way and there are no priority changes when I ran, for example CPUEater or anything).

As I said before, it all worked fine with 6.0.0.40 and any version before. There was nothing changed on the system (hardware or software related) since then. The PL updates were the only updates which run in the last 48 hours. There are also no entries in the windows event logs related to process lasso at all as far as I could see, so thats not helping me too much.

So, what to do next? I know its still alpha, so I just want to mention these problems I have. There are a couple of options:

I led the current version installed for now if you guys have any questions about my issues for now and will probably switch back to the version 5 next week or so.

Or maybe I should simply try to completely clean reinstall the current alpha, but having no GUI means I couldn't export my settings, which would be really bad, so I decided to give this forum a try first

DeadHead · July 14, 2012, 07:40:47 AM

Those are issues I've had as well, but that was with earlier versions (while v.6 was still in alpha).

NewRaven · July 14, 2012, 08:50:31 AM

Okay, I get an update to 6.0.0.43 now but it doesn't change a thing, and I did deactivate avast and restarted windows, but even that wasn't helpfull.

So, next thing I will do is instead of just deactivating avast, I will uninstall it for now and hope that will work. I'll get you back in a few minutes so you don't need that to test it by yourself.

Oh, and here is a screenshot of my taskmanager to show you that there isn't that much junk running in the background here

http://imageshack.us/f/811/pl1va.jpg/

I've read about your problems with the systray icon in the past but I never had that issues. I would probably assume like you do that this is the problem here too, but as I sit in front of my machine and I clearly "feel" if process lasso is working or not, since I use it long enough and I use it not without a reason, I still stand by my point that this isn't the real issue here.

Update: no, uninstalling Avast doesn't help either. What I will do now is uninstalling PL, delete all settings in \AppData\Roaming\ and install the latest beta again. Maybe that will do the trick

Anyway, I will backup the prolasso.ini (its 7 MB already... wow

) for further experiments...

NewRaven · July 14, 2012, 09:33:39 AM

Okay, after a complete uninstall with the deletion of all settings and a fresh install, I have none of my problems with 6.0.0.41 + anymore. 6.0.0.43 now works fine. The only thing that seems very strange to me was that 7 MB prolasso.ini-File

, but to be honest I have no idea what exactly the real problem was. Sadly, I have to make all the settings and categorize any games and so on again, but finally PL is running fine again, starts fine and the gui is resonsive as ever.

Jeremy Collake · July 14, 2012, 07:39:12 PM

Quote from: NewRaven on July 14, 2012, 09:33:39 AM
Okay, after a complete uninstall with the deletion of all settings and a fresh install, I have none of my problems with 6.0.0.41 + anymore. 6.0.0.43 now works fine. The only thing that seems very strange to me was that 7 MB prolasso.ini-File , but to be honest I have no idea what exactly the real problem was. Sadly, I have to make all the settings and categorize any games and so on again, but finally PL is running fine again, starts fine and the gui is resonsive as ever.

Sorry, went to sleep (finally). It happens ;p.

Interesting. I have had reports similar to this, that the auto upgrade causes problems resolved by a full install - when going from v5->v6. What I've now done (in future auto updates) is run the pre-requisite and setup checks normally done in the installer. This will likely fix things up.

In your case, it may have even been that log format change. It was NOT being cleared properly, again due to the auto-upgrade, and that could have caused confusing of both the GUI and core engine.

OR it could have been some particular rule - in which case I need to track it down. Maybe a rule that was changed in some way in the INI file.

Thanks for the report, and keep us updated if further issues come about. I suspect fewer and fewer issues will occur as I get closer to final. Every day the product is improving leaps and bounds, especially internally. I've been working very hard on QA, as I know it needed it - and it was just that 'time' in development.

Last note: Even though we use an INI file, we *do not* use the simple Windows APIs to read it. We have our own code that reads the INI file into memory, parses it, and spits out settings (or stores them). In other words, may look old school, but performs new school

Jeremy Collake · July 14, 2012, 07:42:34 PM

BTW, *first* think I should have done is asked for your INI file ... if you have that old one, please let me know, as I'd like to test with it. If not, my mistake ;o.

NewRaven · July 14, 2012, 08:09:27 PM

Should I try to reuse the "old" Ini-File and check out if my problems come back? Would that help in any way?

However: As I promised, I had made a backup of that file and uploaded it for you:

prolasso_ini.zip
http://www2.zippyshare.com/v/82830792/file.html

Hope that helps (if its related to that)

Jeremy Collake · July 14, 2012, 08:16:23 PM

Thanks man! Just what I needed. It being so large, I definitely hoped you still had it. It insinuates a possible parsing error due to the changes in some of the settings. I must track this down, so will test with it tonight probably and see what's up

.

You're a lifesaver, and I again apologize for misunderstanding at first.

NewRaven · July 14, 2012, 08:28:38 PM

Maybe the problem could have something to do with the [ProcessDefaults]-Section? I'm not that much into your ini-files so I didn't look at this before, but it seems in this section are A LOT of double/tripple (and so on) entries... just a clue

Jeremy Collake · July 14, 2012, 08:33:40 PM

Quote from: NewRaven on July 14, 2012, 08:28:38 PM
Maybe the problem could have something to do with the [ProcessDefaults]-Section? I'm not that much into your ini-files so I didn't look at this before, but it seems in this section are A LOT of double/tripple (and so on) entries... just a clue

Yes ;p. That column is 3.6million text characters long ;o. It is quite clearly the problem. Heck, it may have just taken so much time to parse that *eventually* the programs would have started to respond again, though we'll see when I run it through a debugging session.

Glad we found the cause, as that is DEFINITELY it. If you were affected, others were too, I'm sure.

Jeremy Collake · July 14, 2012, 08:35:24 PM

I found the problem. It was very simple.

The previous entries were not being cleared when it was re-loaded, causing it to get duplicated and duplicated and duplicated (over time). Thus it grew to that size.

Issuing a fix now.

EDIT: Unfortunately, this is going to mandate previous settings be lost. I *can* clean them up, but the problem is that at that size, that operation may take MINUTES to complete ;o.

Jeremy Collake · July 14, 2012, 08:39:21 PM

This ONLY applied to v6 BTW... I had removed some deprecated code (the old High Performance power processes), and in doing so accidentally erased the clearing of the storage objects for these default power profiles.

For ANYONE who uses this feature, over time it would cause the GUI to become less and less responsive, FWIW. Thus, that explains why you had the GUI responsiveness issues.

NewRaven · July 14, 2012, 08:45:51 PM

Glad I could help and great you fixed it already. Thats the reason betas and their testers exists after all

I don't mind to reapply some setting and hopefully there are not that much other people which are affected by this issue

Jeremy Collake · July 14, 2012, 08:48:51 PM

I think this explains the 'other cases' I heard of where a reinstall fixed their issues. ANYONE using this feature would eventually have had this problem, the GUI would go slower and slower and slower ... So, now we know

.

As always, the most SIMPLE and SMALL of mistakes can cause the BIGGEST consequences. Worst is in my skimming (now it was late, and I'd been coding), I nearly MISSED the actual cause here. Thanks for making me listen!

Jeremy Collake · July 14, 2012, 08:57:41 PM

Fix in .44. ~~being issued in about 30 minutes.~~ Now issued.

As I said, I forced a reset of these options. I *could have* preserved them, parsed out the duplicates, etc.. BUT, when they got to be your size, I'd also have to show a dialog saying what the heck Process Lasso was doing ;o.

NewRaven · July 14, 2012, 09:06:48 PM

It isn't worth the hassle to code and implement such a parser and a dialog and implement that only for a bug which occured in (some) beta versions. Just resetting the options makes a lot more sense to me.

Oh, a bit offtopic, but do we get the context menu entries for "classify as media player" and "classify as a anti standby-process" back? Any chance? I know I can do that under Options -> Categorize, but I miss these entries (and because the "classify as game" is still there, it would make sense, too). Mhm... maybe I should better open a suggestions thread, now that I think about it...

Jeremy Collake · July 14, 2012, 09:14:22 PM

Quote from: NewRaven on July 14, 2012, 09:06:48 PM
Oh, a bit offtopic, but do we get the context menu entries for "classify as media player" and "classify as a anti standby-process" back? Any chance? I know I can do that under Options -> Categorize, but I miss these entries (and because the "classify as game" is still there, it would make sense, too). Mhm... maybe I should better open a suggestions thread, now that I think about it...

Well, I had plans for them, BUT it turns out I was behind schedule, so had to defer these. They didn't do much anyway at present. Multimedia processes can be marked as games and achieve similar effects, though that isn't recommended unless it seems to help your situation.

I hope to bring them back ASAP. It might be v6.2 though, as v6.1 has other plans. There is always so much to do ;o. Rushing through it can cause errors like the one in this thread, so I've got to take things slowly and deliberately.