constant "access violations"

[UR user]

I know that occasionally various users have identified "error accessing items" or access violation crashes within ultra recall.

I consistently get the following errors:

Error loading item (s): access violation.
Exception 0XC0000005 occurred in module c:\windows\system32\ntll.dll at address 0x7c9106c3, offset 0x000106c3.

In certain occasions, the problematic "module" refers to the pathname of my ultrarecall installation, and the memory addresses are different for different errors.

In any event, Kinook cannot replicate these errors, and I tried the obvious uninstall, reinstall procedures. I've also tried to contact and repair databases. I have not yet lost any data, but it does require constant shutdown of the program.

Have other folks gotten some such errors, and have you been able to identify the source or some reasonable workaround? Thanks.

[zargron]

Sorry UR user, can't help you.
Deliberately did "stupid" things with UR when I first started using it to test its limits and successfully made it crash a number of times. Now that I'm staying in the "comfort zone" and using UR "normally", it hardly ever crashes. So infrequently I don't even bother to log them any more.

(PS: what's this business of calling yourself UR user?)

[zargron]

Just a moment ago, whilst navigating from one item to another, UR closed down on me!. Not just minimize to system tray. Re-started UR without fuss and didn't lose latest changes.
Murphy's Law 101! :D

[kinook]

1) Exit UR
2) Download and extract http://www.kinook.com/Download/test.zip to the UR installation path
3) Start UR
4) Perform the step that results in the error
5) ZIP and send %TEMP%\ks_trace.txt and a screen shot of the error to support@kinook.com

Thanks.

[UR user]

Well, after having made my post, I tried re-compacting and repairing all of my databases. (I had tried this once before, but still seen similar access violation errors crop up. I can't recall whether it was in a slightly earlier micro-release.)

In any event, in the past two days, those access violation errors have not resurfaced. If they come up again, I will run the trace: thanks.

PS as for "UR user", simply a pseudonym, which I admit, is not very creative. But I signed up for this form a long time ago not knowing whether I would really stick with the product.

[UR user]

Alas, similar errors have appeared again. (This time, there were "out of memory" error boxes as well.) I have sent in the zip file to Kinook. I hope this helps in your diagnosis.

[zargron]

Originally posted by UR user
Alas, similar errors have appeared again. (This time, there were "out of memory" error boxes as well.) I have sent in the zip file to Kinook. I hope this helps in your diagnosis. Are you having absolutely zero problems with every other piece software on your system?
Do you have multiple UR databases that you regularly work on? If so, do you get exactly the same errors in every one of those databases?

[UR user]

Thanks for following up. "Absolutely zero problems" is a little much, given that I'm working on windows. And I've been communicating with Kinook on potential causes. The errors, although frequent, are not clearly reproducible.

I've made some tweaks in the UR options, and am crossing my fingers--after another reinstall, it seems to be behaving fine.

[hansgeorgmack]

Same thing here. UR constantly access violating or silently crash-disappearing without notice. Very difficult to find any pattern in the crashes. Most seem related to embedded functionality (Internet Explorer), but all in all I can pretty much do what I want and have UR crash. Happens on basically all my databases.

Tried compacting+repairing, but first thing I got after it was a crash and no improvement since. Tried downgrading to 3.1 by installing over current setup but UR still displays 3.1.1 as its version (I may be wrong, but the problems seem to have appeared with 3.1.1).

If I uninstall+reinstall, does UR lose all its settings or are they preserved in the registry?

There are other annoying errors like Ultra Recall suddenly displaying OLE server-busy messages (and thus blocking) randomly for completely disassociated applications (like Illustrator) that neither have been started nor otherwise been connected with UR (with the apps not being busy and the message disappearing only by terminating UR). All in all, UR is very near to being unusable which is sad, as I depend on it.

OS is Vista (no problems with UR under XP).

[zargron]

Who is using reminders and how much?

I don't use the reminder facility a hell of a lot.
Whilst preparing to do a parcel of work I'll set a reminder for my next appointment or to prompt me to take a break. I therefore don't often have reminders hammering me when I first start UR. I also don't have UR automatically starting when windows starts. Which begs another question, who has UR starting when windows starts?

I guess I mention these 'cause from my development experience you can stuff up a stable application when responding to user requests orientated around "...me not want to remember that - make program do it automatically...". You then spend some time working out how to make the various new processes cooperate and perhaps be subservient to the existing processes, let alone other apps. For example, compiling a 100,000 line application when UR pops up a reminder. With DB apps something can get out of synch but the consequences not rear their ugly head until sometime later.

I guess I'm fishing for ideas - especially wrt my efforts to make UR crash during evaluation. Doing things like stored content, heaps of tabs open, putting in heaps of reminders and so on and so forth... Probably not being particularly helpful but with these f'ing annoying intermittent problems determining the cause sometimes comes from a quite unexpected direction. :)

[UR user]

Well, I don't use reminders at all. I often have 4 dbs open, but only a few tabs open in any one DB at a time. I store files into UR, since I don't like maintaining duplicate versions.

I thought it might have something to do with running Dragon NaturallySpeaking or Mozy Backup service, or Maxivista video software ... but I can't seem to isolate any causes.

Just listing some details just in case we see a pattern across users.

XP Home, AMD Turion 64, 2 gb memory HP laptop.

[janrif]

Originally posted by zargron
[B]Who is using reminders and how much? [snip]
I use multiple reminders every day w/o incident.

Is there some test you'd like me to conduct that might be helpful in finding a problem. Glad to help if I can.

[zargron]

Originally posted by UR user
...I often have 4 dbs open, but only a few tabs open in any one DB at a time...You probably kind of already answered this: do you get similar/same errors in each database? Doesn't appear to have rhyme nor reason - you're in one / the other / one open / several open...

Originally posted by UR user
..I store files into UR...I don't store very many files in UR and aren't having too many problems. Anybody store contents in some DB's and not others? If so, any feedback you can contribute regards a gut feel on error rate?

[kinook]

Originally posted by hansgeorgmack
Same thing here. UR constantly access violating or silently crash-disappearing without notice. Very difficult to find any pattern in the crashes. Most seem related to embedded functionality (Internet Explorer), but all in all I can pretty much do what I want and have UR crash. Happens on basically all my databases.

Tried compacting+repairing, but first thing I got after it was a crash and no improvement since. Tried downgrading to 3.1 by installing over current setup but UR still displays 3.1.1 as its version (I may be wrong, but the problems seem to have appeared with 3.1.1).
If v3.1.1 is uninstalled before installing v3.1, it should downgrade. Alternatively, delete the UR install path and reinstall v3.1 to downgrade.

You can also try the trace build mentioned in the 4th post of this thread.

If I uninstall+reinstall, does UR lose all its settings or are they preserved in the registry?
With v3.0 and later, there is a prompt during uninstall about whether to delete customization data. Choose No to keep your settings.

There are other annoying errors like Ultra Recall suddenly displaying OLE server-busy messages (and thus blocking) randomly for completely disassociated applications (like Illustrator) that neither have been started nor otherwise been connected with UR (with the apps not being busy and the message disappearing only by terminating UR). All in all, UR is very near to being unusable which is sad, as I depend on it.

OS is Vista (no problems with UR under XP).
Is this something new that previously wasn't happening? Did anything change on your system when it started? Do you have another computer to try it on to see if it is specific to that machine?

[hansgeorgmack]

Thank you for the help!

I reinstalled first, but then decided to try it with the tracing build you supplied. So far, though my use has been somewhat limited the last days, UR has run surprisingly stable. Will report back when I can make a more definite statement.

As for what has changed: I installed Vista :) Other than that, it's hard to come up with anything specific. Since it's a new setup, things have changed pretty rapidly and lots of new software has been installed at various points in time. I can't even tell for sure whether problems started immediately with the OS change or rather appeared later on.

No other computer to try, unfortunately.

BTW: A minor, easily reproducable bug I found in UR 3.1.1 is when you have multiple tabs open and close the second-to-last tab using the 'x' at the right (not the "Close Tab" entry from the popup menu), an empty tab with the original tab's name will appear to the right. Now clicking on the initially last tab (now to the left) will restore the initial tab setup but with the tab names exchanged. This can be repeated indefinitely.