crashing for no particular reason

[Kelter]

I don't know what causes it, but now and again, simply clicking the "help" menu or the "window" menu (actually in the most recent case, I clicked "Window\More windows", and ISIDE just crashes immediately. if i opt to "report" the issue, it creates an email but with an invalid address...or the window asking me if i want to report the bug also freezes.

Have these issues been identified/fixed since 2008?

[Kelter]

I just thought i'd record another instance of this happening.

I'd been working on the project for several hours, and i clicked" Help -> Search...". The help window opened, but before it was populated with any controls (while the window was still all white), it crashed. I clicked "Report" on the InstallShield error handling window, and then it froze as well.

[DebbieL]

Are you able to launch the InstallShield help (.chm files)--or any .chm files for that matter--directly by double-clicking?

The InstallShield .chm files are installed in the following folder:
InstallShield Program Files Folder\Program\0409

[Kelter]

Thanks for the reply! 🙂

Yes, i can launch the chms with no problem, and for the most part, i can launch the help system from the help menu...except when I can't. For the life of me, i can't seem to correlate the crash with any other conditions. I should note that sometimes i don't even have to click an item under the "Help" main menu. Sometimes it crashes as soon as i click "Help" or "Window"

[DebbieL]

Have you tried reinstalling or repairing InstallShield?

It's possible that the IsmAuto.tlb file (installed to Common Files Folder\InstallShield\Shared) needs to be reregistered. I think that a reinstall or repair may fix that. As a shortcut, perhaps using RegTypLib.exe to manually register that file would solve the problem. You can download RegTypLib.exe from KB Q109148.

I hope that helps.

[Kelter]

okay, i'll try those things...meanwhile, maybe this will be of some help?

when it froze, i clicked "Debug", whereupon an exception message popped up, and execution was braked within the memcpy_s.

i set two memory windows to the locations pointed to by src and dst. (i blanked a little bit of the data in one of those windows because it included the name of a file that might identify us...)

i revealed as much of the call stack as possible, also.

[Kelter]

Granted, i haven't tried to repair the installation, but for the record, I was able to launch the help files over and over after restarting ISIDE. i began typing some IS code and then clicked the main menu...my mouse slid from "Help" to "Window" to "Tools" then back to "Window", at which point ISIDE crashed again. Here's the error report information:

Exception ACCESS_VIOLATION (0xc0000005)
at address 0x04b13364 trying to read address 0x00000000.

File : C:\Program Files\Macrovision\IS2008\System\isdev.exe
Version : 14.0.0.162
Exception : c0000005
Address : 04b13364
Access Type : read
Access Address : 00000000

Registers : EAX=00000000 CS=001b EIP=04b13364 EFLGS=00010246
: EBX=00000000 SS=0023 ESP=0012ee0c EBP=771248f0
: ECX=0015b550 DS=0023 ESI=00000000 FS=003b
: EDX=0012ee68 ES=0023 EDI=05b81aa0 GS=0000

Stack Trace : 758b56ec 00000000 00000000 00000000
: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

Execution braked in a different place altogether this time. Just guessing from the context that perhaps whatever thread was trying to update *pEntries hadn't done so before another thread called into AtlInternalQueryInterface... Just a bit of speculation...

I'd reinstall IS, but that's not the kind of thing you get yourself into the day before code freeze...