Problem with target designer

[Lucvdv]

After it hasn't been used for (quite) some time, I now have a severe
problem with target designer.

Not just TD, but my entiry system hangs (freezes) at the end of each build,
just about when it's supposed to finish.


Could this be the result of installing IE5 Beta 3 after the last time I
used it?
Of windows defender beta?
Of one or another (security) update?
Of installing Visual Studio 2005?
[Meaning is there a known conflict somewhere?]


Symptoms:

The last log line in the build window is

Building: "Windows XP Service Pack 2 Resource DLL [Version 5.1.2600.2180, R2890]"...

IIRC, that's usually the last one before it starts listing component sizes.
The build log file, after rebooting, stops a few lines sooner (file still
open at reset and buffer not being flushed, probably).


The desktop stops being refreshed, start menu and taskbar do nothing,
Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't bring up the task manager. The mouse pointer still
changes as usual when it's moved across different screen areas: for example
over target designer it's an hourglass, over the taskbar it's the arrow.
After a few clicks with zero response, it becomes an hourglass for the
taskbar as well.


It's not just the UI that freezes: network access to the machine becomes
impossible as well, even pre-existing connections seem to die (connecting
performance monitor on another system before starting the build, monitoring
CPU use and free memory: data stopped coming in when the system froze).

OTOH, a remote desktop client on the build machine, connected to a W2k
server in remote administration mode while the build was busy, kept working
until I disconnected it.


The first time it happened, I hoped it would get unstuck by itself and
waited for half an hour before reaching to what seems to be the only way
out: the power switch.


On subsequent attemtps I opened task manager before starting the build: it
keeps working (at least for some time) when everything else gets stuck,
indicating 100% CPU use for a couple of seconds and then dropping to 0%.
There's plenty of memory available (peak commit charge about 750 MB, 2 GB
RAM present, 7 digits 'Available', 6 digits 'System Cache').

Trying to use the File / New Task menu makes task manager freeze as well
(no more window updates, no more reaction to mouse clicks). Going to the
"processes" tab and just trying to select another process, freezes it too.


There's plenty of free harddisk space (over 15G free on the disk where the
target is written, 36G on my system disk, and 45G on the one where I keep
my sources and projects).


When I ran chkdsk after rebooting it reported an error (some unused space
marked in use), but letting it fix it didn't keep the problem from
recurring. The error was probably due to having to use the power switch in
the first place.


After the first time it happened, I found an error from my virus scanner
(Sophos) in the event log, saying it couldn't scan a certain file in my
target (I keep it configured to scan on file write, because the default of
scanning on read often leads to severe system slowdown when a file is
updated several times without being kept open between updates, for example
when a folder full of graphics is viewed in thumbnail mode in explorer).

I reconfigured it to exclude the target directory from scans, but that made
no difference.

 

[Lucvdv]

After it hasn't been used for (quite) some time, I now have a severe
problem with target designer.

While thinking of it, I'm beginning to doubt more and more if it has ever
been tested on this machine. I replaced my PC about half a year ago and
reinstalled all apps, including XPe SP2. I'm not sure if I actually tried
building a target then.

There's no limitation to the number of processors or anything, or an
incompatibilty with hyperthreading or so?

 

[Andy Allred [MS]]

Are you sure it's hanging and not simply adding the thousands of regkeys and
copying over any MUI files? After the last component is built into the
config (i think xpsp2res), TD can sometimes have a lot more file copy to
find all associated MUI files for instance. The larger the config and the
more MUI added to it the longer it will take (sometimes several minutes or
more), all the while it appears TD was done. Yes, i know this could probably
be a better user experience, to give some indication. If you're using FP2007
at all, could you file a bug on that if that was the issue?

Thank you.

--
Andy

Check out the Embedded team blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/embedded/

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Lucvdv]

Are you sure it's hanging and not simply adding the thousands of regkeys and
copying over any MUI files? After the last component is built into the
config (i think xpsp2res), TD can sometimes have a lot more file copy to
find all associated MUI files for instance. The larger the config and the
more MUI added to it the longer it will take (sometimes several minutes or
more), all the while it appears TD was done.

Half an hour would seem long though, on a 3.2 GHz CPU with 2G of RAM and
system+apps / data / working space + pagefile distributed over three
physical harddisks to increase perceived disk performance.


Besides, it's not just TD, the entire windows UI freezes *and* the system
stops responding over the network.

In the mean time I also found that canceling a build in progress has the
same effect (it had copied about 10% of the files when I canceled it).


I think I'll just try uninstalling and reinstalling, and if that doesn't
help, try installing on a new clean virtual PC or on another machine.

 

[Lucvdv]

Not just TD, but my entiry system hangs (freezes) at the end of each build,
just about when it's supposed to finish.

I completely uninstalled the XPe tools and database, reinstalled XPe SP1
(tools + database), then applied SP2 to both.

This time I also applied FP2007 to both, this wasn't installed before.


Started a new target, imported a PMQ generated by TAP, added some
components, ran a dependency check, and started a build.

Result: the same as before. At the end of the build, TD as well as my
shell (desktop and task bar) stopped responding.

However, this time it got a little further than before: now the last line
added to the build log window was the warning saying you've created a
time-limited build because you forgot to enter a license key (I should have
gotten that warning the last time too, but it never appeared).


Again, I waited for minutes (longer than it would normally take an entire
build to complete) before reaching for the reset switch, but the system
remained dead.


Task manager was running to monitor CPU and memory use during the build:
CPU use dropped to 0 at the exact moment that the warning line was added to
the build log window. There was no disk activity either.

I could still navigate between the processes and performance tabs in task
manager, but as soon as I clicked the "tdesign.exe" process in the
processes tab to highlight it, task manager froze as well.


On a second attempt, TM died when I tried to enter the networking tab.

As for network: my system could still be pinged after it froze, but trying
to access it in explorer on another machine gave "Windows cannot find
\\computername\. Check the spelling [etc.]"



Has anyone ever tried storing the Mantis database on SQL Server 2005?
The installer puts it there without complaining, but could that maybe be
it?


Other installed software is almost identical to what was installed on my
previous PC, where it worked fine.

What's installed now that wasn't there:

- Microsoft VirtualPC (not running when it happened)
- Sophos antivirus, on-access scanning configured for "at write", with
exclusion of the tree where TD targets are saved.
- Windows Defender beta
- IE7 beta


Also new is the processor: this one has mutithreading. I tried to set the
affinity of tdesign.exe to a single 'processor', but that made no
difference either.

 

[Lucvdv]

I completely uninstalled the XPe tools and database, reinstalled XPe SP1
(tools + database), then applied SP2 to both.

This time I also applied FP2007 to both, this wasn't installed before.

Started a new target, imported a PMQ generated by TAP, added some
components, ran a dependency check, and started a build.

Result: the same as before. At the end of the build, TD as well as my
shell (desktop and task bar) stopped responding.

Now I installed a new CP Pro SP2 under VBMWare Workstation, and installed
the tools there, with my 'real' PC as the server. The tools setup is
identical to the "real' one; installed SP1 tools, updated to SP2, then
updated to FP2007.

Loaded the target I was trying to build before, started a build
(destination: virtual network, overwriting the failed attempt already on my
harddisk): it succeeded.


I'll start installing updates and other software under VMWare now, and try
to find the point where it starts failing.

 

[Lucvdv]

Now I installed a new CP Pro SP2 under VBMWare Workstation, and installed

Ehm, XP and VMWare -- "too many fingers on keyboard" error

the tools there, with my 'real' PC as the server. The tools setup is
identical to the "real' one; installed SP1 tools, updated to SP2, then
updated to FP2007.

Loaded the target I was trying to build before, started a build
(destination: virtual network, overwriting the failed attempt already on my
harddisk): it succeeded.

55 'high importance' updates of XP later, and after installing some other
software I suspected (especially the beta's), TD still works.
But only in the virtual machine, of course.

 

[Andy Allred [MS]]

Hi again.
I am using SQL 2005 Express as my DB engine for all my personal testing and
it's working fine, I also have IE7Beta3 as you do. It sure sounds like
something is causing TD or CMI to fail on your box, can you check event
viewer at the time of the failure and see if there's anything interesting
happening?

--
Andy

Check out the Embedded team blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/embedded/

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Not just TD, but my entiry system hangs (freezes) at the end of each
build,
just about when it's supposed to finish.

I completely uninstalled the XPe tools and database, reinstalled XPe SP1
(tools + database), then applied SP2 to both.

This time I also applied FP2007 to both, this wasn't installed before.


Started a new target, imported a PMQ generated by TAP, added some
components, ran a dependency check, and started a build.

Result: the same as before. At the end of the build, TD as well as my
shell (desktop and task bar) stopped responding.

However, this time it got a little further than before: now the last line
added to the build log window was the warning saying you've created a
time-limited build because you forgot to enter a license key (I should
have
gotten that warning the last time too, but it never appeared).


Again, I waited for minutes (longer than it would normally take an entire
build to complete) before reaching for the reset switch, but the system
remained dead.


Task manager was running to monitor CPU and memory use during the build:
CPU use dropped to 0 at the exact moment that the warning line was added
to
the build log window. There was no disk activity either.

I could still navigate between the processes and performance tabs in task
manager, but as soon as I clicked the "tdesign.exe" process in the
processes tab to highlight it, task manager froze as well.


On a second attempt, TM died when I tried to enter the networking tab.

As for network: my system could still be pinged after it froze, but trying
to access it in explorer on another machine gave "Windows cannot find
\\computername\. Check the spelling [etc.]"



Has anyone ever tried storing the Mantis database on SQL Server 2005?
The installer puts it there without complaining, but could that maybe be
it?


Other installed software is almost identical to what was installed on my
previous PC, where it worked fine.

What's installed now that wasn't there:

- Microsoft VirtualPC (not running when it happened)
- Sophos antivirus, on-access scanning configured for "at write", with
exclusion of the tree where TD targets are saved.
- Windows Defender beta
- IE7 beta


Also new is the processor: this one has mutithreading. I tried to set the
affinity of tdesign.exe to a single 'processor', but that made no
difference either.

 

[Lucvdv]

Hi again.
I am using SQL 2005 Express as my DB engine for all my personal testing and
it's working fine, I also have IE7Beta3 as you do. It sure sounds like
something is causing TD or CMI to fail on your box, can you check event
viewer at the time of the failure and see if there's anything interesting
happening?

Not much, but I can't check when the system is stuck, and after a reset
NTFS may be rolled back to a state where the errors haven't been logged yet
(or maybe they simply never got written to disk).


There's nothing in the system event log around that time.

There are some CMI errors in the Application log, but I checked in the
VMWare virtual machine where TD works, and the same error occurred there
too (5 times during each build).

This is the message that seems to occur at build time:

The CMI encountered the following error: 0x80070057 (-2147024809) The
parameter is incorrect.
\cmicommonc-1828



The next two don't come from TD, but from launching the Component Database
Manager. I tried a couple of times; this sequence occurs twice everytime
the CDM is started. Also on the virtual machine as well as the real one.

The CMI encountered the following error: 0x80042343 (-2147212477) A
Utilities method referenced a non-existent registry key or value.
\utilitiesc-1259

The CMI encountered the following error: 0x80042343 (-2147212477) Method
Utilities.LocalRegRead failed.

 

[Ben H]

> Not just TD, but my entiry system hangs (freezes) at the end of each build,
> just about when it's supposed to finish.

I had the same problem. After several hours of frustration, I think I have the solution.
The problem appears to be caused by the Sophos Antivirus 'on-access scanning'. I turned off on-access scanning, and build now completes correctly.