Submitted by jimspoon on 2023/09/03 22:45

This is a follow up to my "can't close welcome.sndb" post awhile back.  My problem is that I'll come back to my laptop and find that my IQ instance isn't responding.  I've discovered it's not just "welcome.sndb" that does this; it also happens with my "main.sndb" instance when it's the only instance running.  I call it a zombie, because the taskbar icon is still present, the infoqube.exe process is still appears in "Process Explorer".  The window is entirely unresponsive.  The X button will still turn red if i hover over it, but if I click it, nothing happens, not even an "infoqube is not responding" message.  Right now IQ is the only app that's having this problem on my laptop.  I wonder if it has something to do with sleep mode.  My laptop is a Lenovo Yoga 6 with an AMD Ryzen 5 5500U CPU, and I had read something about this system having problems waking up from sleep mode.  I've looked in Power Options, and following a suggestion, I had already turned off "Fast Startup".  Any suggestions, any steps for debugging?

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There has been a number of v122t versions (yeah, I know, this was lazy on my part). I haven't seen this issue recently so please try out v122u coming out today and report back

This is still happening on my Lenovo Yoga 6 (Ryzen 5) laptop, running 1.123.1Pre2.  I haven't seen it happen on my other computers.  It has happened once or twice with my "main.sndb" file, but it's guaranteed to happen with the "Welcome.sndb" database.  I always notice it when I come back to that instance of IQ after having left it for awhile (not sure whether sleep mode is necessary to trigger the problem or not).  I like to have that database open so I can use the Help pages.  I always have to kill that IQ instance and then restart and reopen Welcome.sndb.

Maybe it has something to do with having two IQ instances running on this laptop?  I haven't tested to see if it would happen with only one instance open.   Maybe it happens only with the second instance that was opened?  Haven't test that idea yet. 

Yep, I had this today as well. Non-responsive IQ after unlocking my laptop. This has never happened to me before. I had two IQ files open at the time. Using the newest version that I downloaded earlier today.

I've had several grids open in tabs - IQDoc, Welcome, and Doc Updates.  Plus the Home page.  Not sure whether IQDoc or Welcome grid was active.  I've now closed the IQDoc grid, and the Welcome grid is open.  I've tried to trigger the issue by manually putting the laptop in sleep mode, the freeze did not happen.  I opened both Properties and Documents panes to see if manual sleep mode would then trigger the issue; it did not.  So now I've closed the Properties and Documents panes, leaving Welcome grid open, to see if the freeze will happen.  Right now Welcome.sndb is the only database open.  

Just in case these things might have any bearing on the issue:

Enable Remote Database One Way Sync is enabled for Welcome.sndb, but Sync Changes Every X Minutes is set to 0.

Infoqube Events and Reminders system tray app is running.

UPDATE: With Properties and Documents panes closed, Welcome grid active, the freeze did not happen overnight, despite system being in sleep mode and locked during that time.

When I have Welcome.sndb loaded, it always locks up on my Lenovo Yoga 6 alc136 AMD laptop.  On my Acer Spin 5 sp513 Intel laptop, it does not lock up.  But I just want to report that if I close the doc pane on the Lenovo Yoga 6, it does not lock up either.  So it seems that having the doc pane open somehow is crucial to causing a lock up.  Of course Welcome.sndb has a lot of user manual content in the doc pane, but I guess I'll be ok if I just remember to close the doc pane after browsing it.  Using 124.6. 

Doc pane related, OK, we're progressing:

  1. Test with focus in the Doc pane and focus in the grid
  2. Doc pane is docked or floating?
  3. On the Acer, with the Doc pane open, it does not lock up?

I've put both Lenovo and Acer laptops in the same "IQ State" - my main.sndb file open, Welcome.sndb also open.  Grids open: Welcome, IQDoc, and Doc Updates.  Doc pane open and docked to the right.  Focus in the Welcome grid, on the item with text "InfoQube Documentation: Main Page".  Now I'll just wait and see.  Later I'll test to see if it happens when the focus is in the doc pane.  It's always when I come back to the Welcome.sndb window after having been away for it for awhile, not sure if it's always after I wake it up from sleep mode.

I just hope this won't be like the parrots who went on the Johnny Carson show but then wouldn't talk !!

With the setup just described, and with the Lenovo running on battery, I saw the Lenovo had gone into sleep mode.  I woke it up, and voila - the Welcome.sndb window is not responding.  Just to test, I manually put the Acer in sleep mode and woke it up, Welcome.sndb window not frozen.  Now on the Lenovo I'll put the focus in the Doc pane and see what happens.

Lenovo Welcome.sndb with focus in doc pane and in edit mode froze.  I must have minimized the window because it won't restore from the taskbar.  The thumbnail image on the taskbar is still there, and if I hover over the thumbnail, the full screen window appears, but I can't restore it by clicking on it.

This time I had Welcome.sndb as my only IQ instance, still froze.  CPU usage is around 1% or less.  Private bytes around 80MB.  Working set around 30MB.

I used Procdump to generate a process dump file, maybe that will reveal something?  It's over 5MB.  I put it on my Google drive and I'll send you a link.

I can't remember Welcome.sndb not freezing on this laptop.  I have lots of old versions of portable IQ - I guess I could try running an old version and see if the behavior still occurs, if the old version will still run.  If so, would you have a suggestion about which version I might try?

 

 

Well, this is the "Zombie" thread that keeps coming back to life.  This time it's different, but perhaps it may shed some light on the underlying problem. This time it wasn't Welcome.sndb that froze, it was my main.sndb file.  And the problem was first visible not after waking up the laptop from sleep, but while I was working with the file in IQ.  I was making an "IQ version" of a website now available only on web.archive.org.  I pasted the text from a particular page ( https://web.archive.org/web/20200715123707/http://photometadata.org/MET… ) so that each paragraph would become an Item, the text in the Item field.  This page had an image that though, and I put that into the Doc pane of an item using  Menu > Insert > Image.  In that dialog I pasted the URL of the Image ( https://web.archive.org/web/20200715123707im_/http://photometadata.org/… ) The image appeared in the Doc pane.  I moved to other items.  Not long after that IQ froze.  I couldn't do anything with in the main.sndb window.  Hovering the mouse over the window close button in the upper right wouldn't make it turn red.  However, when I hovered mouse over the IQ button in the Windows taskbar, the little thumbnail image of the IQ window popped up, and that little thumbnail itself had a close button that turned red when I hovered over it.  When I clicked that close button, IQ closed.  When I opened the file all seemed intact, and the image I had just inserted appeared as it should.  I think this was time the freeze was a bit different, in that I was able to close IQ by clicking the thumbnail close button, whereas with the Welcome.sndb freezes, I don't think I was able to do this - in that case I always killed that instance of IQ using Process Explorer.  One common factor in the freeze is the Doc pane being open.  No doc pane, no freeze. 

I'm not sure that this is related to the "Zombie" thread. It is rare, but sometimes, some web site does cause a lock of the Doc pane. I've not been able to isolate the issue just yet

As to the original issue, ensure that all Doc panes are attached to the main UI, not to a dashboard as this recent feature hasn't been fully tested

Pierre_Admin

running Pre3 right now.  Lately I've been trying out making the doc pane a floating pane with auto-hide on, I need to try that with the Welcome.sndb file.  Not sure if it prevents the freezes, but so far I like it for use on a laptop.  It makes good use of the laptop's limited window space.  Making it a floating window leaves a handy floating banner that tells me if the doc pane has something in it or is empty; and also it leaves the grid workspace the same size.  F4 and F6 serve the dual purpose of switching between grid and properties/doc panes, and hiding the auto-hiding floating panes. 

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