DDE Error When Compiling VC++ DSW Files

hdeshmukh · #1 10-08-2003, 04:41 PM

Hi there,

I seem to have this intermittent problem in my current Visual Build Pro setup. Randomly during the compile of a large dsw file, Visual Build Pro gets a DDE Error Memory Access Violation from C++ which results in a message box that waits for user to input ok or cancel. The problem is:

(a) there is nothing wrong with the code being compiled. It has not changed and compiled in VC++ Successfully and also compiled successfully in VisualBuild as well.
(b) if I re-run the step, it is just as likely to complete as it is to fail with the same error.
(c) the error step of sending an email does not get triggered until the user clicks on the message box, which is a real pain, cause you can never know when the build has actually failed, in which case it just sits there and the build has to be constantly monitored to make it complete successfully.

Now with VisualBuild Pro 4.5, I found that running PCAnywhere on the build machine at the same time as a build would increase the chances of the error occurring. But on this new build machine, with version 5.0, PCAnywhere is not installed (Only VNC is), although it seems that the error started occurring more once Symantec Norton Antivirus was installed. So I disabled Norton Antivirus, but I am still getting this same error.

Has anyone run into the problem? And has anyone got any tips for me to avoid this situation.

Thanks in advance for any assistance/advice

UPDATE: How fortunate!!! The error just reoccurred! I can now attach the bmp of the error message:

Hamad Deshmukh
Software Developer
Creo Inc.
email: Hamad.Deshmukh@Creo.com

hdeshmukh · #2 10-08-2003, 04:50 PM

Here is the attachment

kinook · #3 10-09-2003, 01:49 PM

That error is not a VBP error. The dialog is actually coming from msdev.exe, the Visual C++ command-line compile tool (which the Make VC6 action calls to actually build each project). You would need to open a support incident with Microsoft regarding that (if you check the 'show command-line' checkbox on the Options tab of the Make VC6 action, you can get the msdev command-line that is actually being invoked for submitting with your issue).

This doesn't seem to be a common problem; I've never seen it or heard of it before, and I don't see any relevant matches doing a quick search on Google and MSDN. I have experienced other problems with VC++ with anti-virus software installed, so you may want to try a fresh machine that doesn't have that (or other third party applications or components) installed to see if is related. You might also want to try uninstalling or disabling any Visual C++ add-ins that are installed.

pjaquiery · #4 10-09-2003, 03:44 PM

There is a general problem here, and the solution is non-trivial I think. It is fairly easy to get into a situation where a script is blocked waiting on a spawned application which has a dialog up waiting for a user action. Visual Studio 7.x is a real pain like that! It brings up a dialog when there is a problem with the command line, but doesn't tell you exactly what the problem is and has no way of suppressing the dialog.

Is it possible to time out spawned applications and continue the script with a step failure? Icing would be to look a processor load and only time out if activity were below some threshold.

kinook · #5 10-09-2003, 04:55 PM

In this particular case, it's a crash dialog, and the only solution would be to resolve the cause of the crash.

What sort of dialogs are you referring to? I have never experienced the issue of some dialog requiring user input being displayed when invoking VC 6 or VS.NET 7.x via the command-line.

In VC6, I do recall disabling the VSS integration by creating a DWORD registry value HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Devstudio\6.0 \Source Control\Disabled = 1, but I thought that was only to prevent popups when interacting with the IDE (not the command-line). If the dialogs you're seeing are related to that, there may be a similar registry setting that would help.

pjaquiery · #6 10-09-2003, 05:03 PM

I see it with bogus .sln files or bogus project names (projects that are not part of the solution) and possibly with bad configurations.

I get similar problems with other applications such as Wise, but I can't remember specific details.

Most often these are due to one off errors while generating the build project, but they take a while to resolve because they rely on my watchdog timer firing and reminding me that I've not seen a result from some build I started a while ago.