Resource Leak

This is an ugly one that has happened to me a couple of times. My whole system will get bogged down. The mouse cursor will become choppy. Eventually I won't be able to open or save files (in any application, not just Filter Forge!). Windows starts popping up errors because it can't display icons for things like "My Documents" and all sorts of other mess. I would have saved some screenshots, but I didn't have resources to do anything until I closed filter forge.

The first time this happened, I was rendering images for diffuse, specular, normal, and bump maps with my slimy metal plates filter. The second time -- and this one hurt -- I was in the filter editor clicking back and forth between different components to get a preview. It started getting choppy, so I tried to save, but it didn't have enough resources to save, then it popped up a bug report. I made one last futile attempt to save, but then the whole thing crashed and completely wiped out my filter. It ended up being just a 0-byte file.

Yes, we're looking into this. Errors like this are very hard to pinpoint, so I can't promise the fix anytime soon.

Quote
StevieJ wrote: Vladimir, would it help to copy down everything in the error message then post it or send it in via email?

Yes, every bit of information is helpful.

i used to get this a lot on my old rig. the work-around is to save, save, save. if you see your mouse hang or lag even once, SAVE YOUR WORK! if you see the swap file is being used a lot (the harddrive light is going on a LOT and staying on a LOT), save your work! if you've been running other programs, especially resource hungry programs and then run FF, you might want to reboot your machine before running FF. even if you close down other programs before running FF, all you're doing is delaying the problem. it's still going to happen. oh, and this is on a windows xp rig. that's all i've run FF on, so i cant speak to other o/s'es.

on my new rig it still happens at times. and i suspect this is more of a windows resource handling thing than an FF thing. i've noticed that even with 2 gigs of ram and a 2 gig swap file, i still get resource handling problems, and not just with FF. PCI-E video cards seem to handle it a bit better but it's still there. large amounts of ram handle it better, but it's still there.

windows xp is far more stable than win98 but it's also far from perfect. and it's all still based on the old 8088 chips. so, the work-around is to basically use as few resources as possible and then refresh it when necessary. the refresh can be done with a reboot or with memory flusher programs. i've never used the latter, but i've had it recommended to me from time to time. you can also trim the number of programs that are running at any given time. trim your windows services also and maybe some of those terminate but stay resident (TSR's) type programs.

now, this isnt to say that the FF team cant do anything about this... or that it can. but i do know that windows has this problem in general, so, work-arounds are almost always going to be necessary when dealing with windows.

jits, yes, closing the app and restarting will flush THOSE resources. however, i'm not sure it will flush other resources that may be taxing the system. quite honestly, i dont know exactly when and how windows makes room in ram. i do know that if i've been playing a resource intensive game, working in paint shop pro and then use FF, my working amount of time before the leak shows seems less than if i just open FF on freshly booting up. and i will qualify that with this is not a benchmarked test or anything, just an impression.

I think I'll figure out how to uplaod images later...

This is what the “Internal Error” read:

“<class XFW::OSCallError> ::CreateFileW(file ‘C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Filter Forge\MY Filters\profiletesta.ffxml) failed with error code 0x000005AA: Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service.

Please report this problem to the Filter Forge developers:
Generate Bug Report…”


That last line was a button that failed to generate the report after I clicked it (because of "not enough resources", if I recall correctly).


P.S. I think my computer once even started freezing up while I was out of the actual Editor, where I was just adjusting sliders -- it looked like it had completely re-"paint"ed the filter image but then just kept on processing (all the bars already went green and then gray). (I think in all instances for me it has been with a "surface filter" by the way). But after several minutes of just waiting -- I think things went back to normal without having to exit FF. (At least that time. But my cursor was definitely freezing up a bit -- so I think it was a similar problem.) Edit: I'm pretty sure I soon exited FF afterwards without trying to apply it to my image -- so maybe that avoided some problems.(?)

Are system profile specs captured on crash? Because I suspect that many people are foolishly trying to use less than a gig of ram on XP and trying to run intensive applications.