Strange file layout editor crashes

[tahrey]

Hi,

 

Since signing up and seeing no-one else reporting this, I've tested a fresh install on my work PC and had no problems, so it could be that the issue is fixable simply by reinstalling 2.5.5.0 from scratch on my home PC (where I'm having the trouble) rather than as an update.

 

But, just in case it isn't, I want to get the ball rolling ... and if it IS something corrupt in it, it'd be nice to figure out what may have happened!

 

Basically, the file layout editor seems to have become VERY fragile, and, I think, suffering from some kind of buffer overrun. There's only so many files I can add or other changes that can be made (a small, semi random number) in any one session before it crashes out in one of a number of diverse ways. Seeing as I had a lot of burns to do, I've put up with this for a while, just Saving Early And Saving Often - to multiple project files, as the crash can even happen halfway through a save.

 

All other functions appear to work just fine, and once a project is built it burns normally and, so long as I've got decent media*, gives a good result.

(* Would I be right in guessing that Sony DVD+R media is Taiyo Yuden? I never really paid it much attention, but it's given me excellent results, sometimes near-flawless when read-tested at 16x ... but my usual supplier (local supermarket I can just drop in and pick up a spindle at an entirely fair price) has switched to TDK, which I was wary of given previous bad experience... and its been proven right, as although I've only had a couple outright coasters, I'm having to burn one speed step lower to get a reliable result, and the CD-DVDSpeed results are noticably worse (at all speeds, not just 16x), to the point with some that I'm not comfortable with keeping them for archive-backup and have reburnt, effectively making retroactive coasters before father time does it instead. Hopefully the Verbatim spindle that I picked up on clearance at PC World will do better...)

 

Basically, I have a lot of media files that were on a couple of 1Tb USB drives, from ~5mb thru to 1.5Gb (mostly in the 12~300mb range), one of which started going bad, before I'd managed to back a lot of them up in a more leisurely manner. Couldn't afford the time or money to replace it immediately so split them out over a couple other external drives inamongst their existing other photo, mp3, document scan etc files (...with two partitions each!). In the meantime the pile was also still slowly increasing, temporarily on my laptop internal drive. Many of them are part of particular related series of recordings, but the split didn't take notice of that, just fitting things where they would fit.

 

New 2Tb replacement disc bought, decided to consolidate, but learned a lesson about data duplication for less panicked (and more reliable) recovery, so until the stuff's all burnt I'm not deleting the first copies... in order to keep track of it all, the "new" ones are on the big drive in folders corresponding to the temporary drives, and I've got a spreadsheet to help me band the related series back together from the various folders and onto a stack of roughly 4.2Gb DVDs (the approx capacity point at which the error rate starts to climb exponentially with my old LiteOn USB writer). It was a bit of a pain doing that organisation, but it's good to go. It does, however, involve quite a lot of individual drag + drop file drops into the layout editor, and then some follow-up rearrangement to get them grouped into matching folders. Which is where this problem kicks in.

 

I wasn't sure at first whether it was a problem unique to my install / machine, or just that no-one else was having to do quite the same level of complicated file acrobatics and so wasn't provoking the bug (you can do... like... maybe 10-15 things, which may be enough if you just want to juggle a couple files & folders about? oddly a group drag-and-drop of like 10 folders with 25+ large files each seems to count for just as much as D+Ding a single small file or folder, as does saving the project (with the potential of corrupting the save file!) and pressing the "calculate" button!). But I've installed on this machine, with a USB pocket disk plugged in that has the secondary backups of some yet newer material, and ImgBurn is working perfectly under otherwise near-identical conditions. So it's something at the home end.

 

A secondary problem is, at this point, I haven't been able to send any automated bug reports - the third party crash reporting/debug tool that seems to be built into ImgBurn doesn't work right much of the time (it crashes even by itself!), and when it does, it wants to send via outlook express, which I don't have an account set up for. I could copy and paste the info it gives me into a forum post, however, if that's useful. Also, providing any kind of log would be fairly pointless, as by the time ImgBurn is producing logs for me, I've already passed the stage where the crash may occur.

 

I can list some possibly pertinent things off the top of my head...

 

* Windows XP SP3 Tablet PC edition

* Pentium M CPU, 2Gb RAM, both seem in tip top condition still, no other faults that suggest processor or memory breakdown

* 120Gb internal IDE disk with 2 partitions

* Next-to-latest version of .net; after having gone through the whole uninstall - cleanout - reinstall process last year, I'm not yet prepared to have to do it again now that an auto update has been flagged as failing once more.

* Iomega Select and Prestige external USB hard disks, and also an encrypted Buffalo pocket disk. The problem also manifested with a Western Digital Elements that I used for a while (before having to send it back... thank 'eavens for not having deleted the "originals"), however.

* Lite-On "EZDub" 16x super-multi DVD writer on external USB. Rarely misses a beat. Don't know if I ever updated the firmware, but irrelevant anyway - the problem occurs even if it's unplugged and I'm making an ISO.

* A lot of the files have quite long filenames. It's within UDF convention, and I've kept the folder names as short as possible in contrast (2-16 chars typical), but there are a lot of Joliet renaming warnings when I hit Recalculate. I'm not too bothered, I've only included ISO and Joliet in case I have to - for some reason - read the discs back in an older PC, or a compatible DVD drive or whatever. The problem often occurs before I even hit recalc, though.

* Tried installing a piece of interface software that came with a home energy monitor thing recently, and it failed pretty hard, as did the uninstall. Still getting errors about "SQL Dumper" not being present or something. Can't remember if this issue started before/after/at the same time, but it's the only other change/cock-up that I can point to, other than updating from 2.5.4.0 and all the endless windows updates ...

* If I drag + drop a folder with the same name as an existing one onto the FLE window, it gives me the expected warnings, but what then happens is odd: it'll warn about duplication of all the existing files in that folder and ask about replace, skip, etc... even though the actual incidence of repetition is very low (<1% - most of them are unique), and it doesn't copy ANY of the files from the new folder. Instead I have to open said folder in explorer and drag/drop them from there, whereupon it works fine with no duplication warning or whatever, except the crashing.

* I am using Windows Classic theme...

* Also using Avast! free edition (kept up to date and registered) and, possibly, at some point, Spybot's proactive protection bits (NOT been kept up to date), no trojans/viruses/whatever reported in ages (and that was part of an old demoscene prod I burnt a couple years back). Notebook hardware control looks after the cpu speed, voltage etc, but has done so A-OK for several years at this point. Firewall is hardware.

 

 

Any inklings what it may be? As I get into the latter part of this recovery project it's starting to really drag as the file structures and juggling are getting steadily more complex as I mop up the stragglers and push towards finally having it all consolidated. I think I had to restart 10-15 times for the last one, and start over entirely after about the 5th because the save file got mullered, and then I slipped and saved it over the backup rather than LOADING the backup. It's untenable. Hopefully reinstalling solves it all, but it's still bizarre.

 

Cheers,

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Please attach the crash logs or just email them manually to the address in the program's 'About' box.

 

Even a screenshot of the call stack would do - I think you have just to click the button to show the report and then switch to the right tab (this is on the 'crash' dialog of course).