Affinity Suite: Error Management

[dlampel]

I have attached the Windows Events Viewer file, generated today. I have also attached the Affinity Crash reports for Oct 14--all from that afternoon, which means it did not generate a Crash Report for the first (am) item in my post from Oct 14.

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

I'm not seeing this behaviour here, nor have I seen similar reports of this occurring. It appears as though this might be a rendering error after opening a document - if you zoom in the file do you find it then appears 'fullscreen' as expected?

It's hard to be certain from the screenshots you've provided - are your documents 'Floating' in Publisher? If you navigate to Window > Arrange > Dock All, do they now appear 'fullscreen' as expected?

As to the odd "false-windows" described in the third item, I have been unable to duplicate that anomaly, nor have I been able to duplicate the Publisher program crashing when I just closed a file--although it seems to me I had run into this phenomenon in an earlier version. The behavior was that clicking in X in the upper right-hand corner of the file window (to close the file) results in the program interpreting that to mean that the program should be closed, and does so immediately. But, again, I haven't been able to duplicate this behavior.

20231016.evtx 20231014pm.zip

[Dan C]

Many thanks for providing these for me!

Your Event Viewer logs show that Windows Explorer is hanging, and shortly after the Affinity apps crash in System.IO.FileSystemWatcher - essentially meaning Windows is having trouble with your file system and the Affinity apps then try and access this hung process, which in turn causes the Affinity apps to crash.

Windows Explorer hangs can happen for many reasons, so I'd recommend the following:

1. Update Windows - it appears as though you are using a Windows version which has since been patched, so I'd recommend installing the latest version through Windows Settings
    
2. Run Windows SFC tool - Windows covers this process here, as you are running Windows 11 you can skip step 2 (DSIM):
   https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/use-the-system-file-checker-tool-to-repair-missing-or-corrupted-system-files-79aa86cb-ca52-166a-92a3-966e85d4094e
    
3. Update your GPU drivers - this is a recommended step according to a few sites reporting on exporer.exe hangs, and we always recommend running the latest drivers for Affinity. You can find the latest drivers for your Intel i5-10400 here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/199271/intel-core-i510400-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-30-ghz/downloads.html

Finally, I can see you are using the MSIX version of the Affinity apps, which can occasionally have a harder time accessing files/folders on your system due to the Sandboxed nature of MSIX apps.

Therefore I'd recommend uninstalling the MSIX versions (this can be done through Windows Settings > Apps & Features) and then installing the EXE versions from the below links, selecting the "Also Available : EXE" download options for each:

Photo - https://store.serif.com/update/windows/photo/2/ 
Designer - https://store.serif.com/update/windows/designer/2/ 
Publisher - https://store.serif.com/update/windows/publisher/2/ 

Please do let me know how you get on here

[dlampel]

Thank you, Dan, for all the advice. I will begin working my way through it. I like the last best: returning to the EXE versions! I will keep you posted.

[dlampel]

I really, really wanted these fixes to work. For I love using the Affinity programs and have no desire to switch to anything else. I would be perfectly happy to find that it was/is my system that is the culprit, rather than Affinity. Alas...

1. I performed every step you suggested, save for the Windows update, for Microsoft reports that I am indeed up to date.
2. I just opened Publisher (EXE) and then the document (a newsletter) I began yesterday. Everything OK so far.
3. So as to paste some word processor text into a text frame, I right-clicked to bring up the context menu.
4. Crash (no menu displayed; just disappeared).
5. I repeated steps 2 and 3, above.
6. Crash.

Mind you, all of the above steps were preceded by two reboots.

[dlampel]

[Addendum]

Subsequently, using CTRL-V did work to place the text in the frame.

[dlampel]

I have been working for about the last hour in Publisher without issue--so long as I do not right-click.

There was no crash report for what occurred this morning.

[Dan C]

I'm very sorry to hear this Dave!

1 hour ago, dlampel said:

• So as to paste some word processor text into a text frame, I right-clicked to bring up the context menu.
• Crash (no menu displayed; just disappeared).

Out of interest, do you have a clipboard manager or similar app that may be interfering with the paste/context menu within Affinity?

I'd also like to suggest a few more options, to see if we can specifically pinpoint the cause here.

1. 'Roll back' to version 2.1.1 - now you have the 2.2 EXE version installed, we can technically install 2.1.1 MSIX at the same time, provided the apps aren't open simultaneously. We don't recommend this long term, but can be useful for testing purposes.
   Of course any of your saved 2.2 documents won't be compatible within this version, but I'm interested to know if 2.1.1 is legitimately more stable for you and the crashing you're experiencing is directly related to the 2.2 update - or if this is simply coincidental timing with the latest release.
    
2. Create a new user account - if you are willing, I'd be interested to know how the apps behave on your PC within a new user account on Windows. Once you've created the account you can install the version 2.2 Affinity apps and use your Affinity ID to license the apps (as you would normally) and then using either a new document, or continuing with the files you're using above where you're experiencing issues, test the app to see if they remain as unstable as they are on your regular account./
   This could help determine if the cause of the latest instabilities within Affinity on your PC are related to additional third party apps you may have installed, your user profile configuration, Windows OS settings etc. 

Should the same issues occur in a new user profile, and not within 2.1.1 then this would give much more credit to the possibility of a wider issue within version 2.2 that I could report to our development team for further investigation

[dlampel]

41 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Out of interest, do you have a clipboard manager or similar app that may be interfering with the paste/context menu within Affinity?

No, only that built into Windows. The right-click submenu has always worked for me before. I typically would just use CTRL-V, but in this first time after all the adjustments I wanted to work cleanly from menus. Interestingly, this "bug" has been the most replicable: After breaking for lunch I returned to my newsletter document and right-clicked again. Crash. Again, no Crash Report for the event.

I will try these two suggestions you make and report back.

[dlampel]

Dan,

I cannot afford the time to do any truly invasive testing, but I did enough for what I hope will be useful results for you.

1. I created a new Windows account and installed 2.1.1 MISX under it.
2. Opened a 2.1.1 template for the same newsletter I have been working on.
3. Right-clicking in a text frame brought up the context menu as it should.
4. I loaded a couple of the recent 88x files that had been causing problems. I expected an error message telling me they were from the wrong version of Publisher, but they opened normally. However, when I clicked to close the "Missing Fonts" message (by clicking on the X in the upper right-hand corner) the program crashed (in that mysterious way of simply disappearing).
5. I suspect it was Publisher's way of telling me "these files do not belong here."
6. Then I opened three earlier Reflections documents that had been saved under 2.1.1. All behaved normally. Closing them did no harm to the program (it did not crash).

Next I ran 2.2 under the new account. Tried right-hand click again, and it immediately crashed.

[Dan C]

Many thanks for trying all of these steps for me and I'm very sorry to hear this behaviour has continued.

I've escalated this issue internally with our team as I'm unsure of why the apps are acting in this way for you, so I'll be sure to respond here ASAP with any further suggestions we have.

In the meantime, I appreciate new crash reports are not being generated by the app, therefore would you be able to produce a new Event Viewer log, following the same steps as before, to see if there is any further indication of a cause to the right-click context menu crash you can replicate across multiple users?
Again this is not something being reported by other users or replicable directly by our team at this time, indicating a potential local issue to your machine but hopefully the Event log will be clearer in this regard

[dlampel]

14 minutes ago, Dan C said:

would you be able to produce a new Event Viewer log, following the same steps as before, to see if there is any further indication of a cause to the right-click context menu crash you can replicate across multiple users?

Here it is.

20231018.evtx

[Dan C]

Thanks for providing that for me and your continued patience here!

Your latest event viewer shows the crash is certainly occurring due to the app trying to draw the right-click (context) menu -see the below excerpt - though our team aren't able to decipher much more information as to the cause of this issue, from said log -

Spoiler

Application: Publisher.exe
Framework Version: v4.0.30319
Description: The process was terminated due to an unhandled exception.
Exception Info: System.AccessViolationException
   at <Module>.Affinity.FieldFormatController.IsFormattable(Kernel.Counted<Story::FormattableFieldGlyph const >*)
   at Serif.Interop.Persona.Tool.DoesTextSelectionContainFields(Serif.Interop.Persona.IDocumentView, Boolean ByRef, Boolean ByRef)
   at Serif.Affinity.Workspaces.Workspace.GetContextMenuForSelectionInView(Serif.Interop.Persona.IDocumentView)
   at Serif.Affinity.Services.UserInterfaceService.DisplayContextMenuForSelection(Serif.Interop.Persona.IDocumentView, Serif.Interop.Persona.ContextMenuType, Int32)
   at Serif.Interop.Persona.UserInterface.DocumentRenderControl.InteropService_ShowContextMenuNotification(System.Object, Serif.Interop.Persona.ShowContextMenuNotificationEventArgs)
   at Serif.Interop.Persona.Services.InteropService.OnShowContextMenuNotification(Serif.Interop.Persona.NativeWrapper<Kernel::NonCounted<Kernel::Notification> >)
   at Serif.Interop.Persona.Services.InteropService.HandleNotification(Kernel.Counted<Kernel::Notification>*, Boolean)
   at Serif.Interop.Persona.Services.InteropService.OnNotify(Kernel.Counted<Kernel::Notification>*)
   at <Module>.GetNotificationDispatch.<lambda_5110c3db91a5586d308facaff1f9cbcb>.()()(?GetNotificationDispatch@@$$FYA?AV?$function@$$A6AXXZ@std@@V?$Counted@VNotification@Kernel@@@Kernel@@@Z.__l2.<lambda_5110c3db91a5586d308facaff1f9cbcb>*)
   at MS.Win32.UnsafeNativeMethods.DispatchMessage(System.Windows.Interop.MSG ByRef)
   at System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher.PushFrameImpl(System.Windows.Threading.DispatcherFrame)
   at System.Windows.Application.RunDispatcher(System.Object)
   at System.Windows.Application.RunInternal(System.Windows.Window)
   at Publisher.Application.Main(System.String[])

 

Therefore they've requested a .DMP file, which can be force generated through Task Manager, as I understand the app is not generating one when crashing.

If you can please open the Affinity app and just before triggering this crash, right click on the Affinity app in the Task Manager and select Create dump file.

Then, trigger the issue by right clicking and quickly return to Task Manager, to try and create a second dump file before the app fully closes.

Can you please upload these manually created dump files here for me, so that we can continue our investigation?

[dlampel]

Dan,

I didn't know if this would work, since I am now running the updated v2.2.1, but it did crash, as before. Always before Publisher would almost immediately disappear. This time, my clicking in Task Manager seemed to halt the process (locking up the program without making it disappear from memory), but once the second DMP file was written, it did disappear.

The attached ZIP file contains the two (rather large) DMP files.

Publisher-DMPs.zip

[Dan C]

Thanks for these Dave, looking at these DMP files it appears as though the issue may be caused by low disk space - which could explain why the same behaviour was seen in the second user account.

How much free space do you have available on your internal hard drive please?

[dlampel]

10 minutes ago, Dan C said:

How much free space do you have available on your internal hard drive please?

The drive that the program runs on--OS (C:)--has 765 GB free space, and the drive (partition) that contains the working document files has 420 GB free space.

[dlampel]

Just a thought:

Perhaps the right-click crashing has something to do with the content in the Clipboard. The content each time the program crashed was word processor text. Today, however, I have been working on an anniversary card. I had placed four pix on the page 1 layout board and wanted to move them all to page 2. I selected the four images, right-clicked, and selected Paste without incident. But when the Clipboard contained simple text, just right-clicking would crash the program. (Nothing wrong with the text; using CTRL-V it was placed without issue.)

[Dan C]

It's certainly possible that the Clipboard contents are causing the crash - which is equally why Clipboard managers can cause similar behaviour.

Are you able to upload a copy of the .docx file, containing the text that was on your clipboard at the time, so I can test further with this here?

[dlampel]

9 minutes ago, Dan C said:

Are you able to upload a copy of the .docx file, containing the text that was on your clipboard at the time, so I can test further with this here?

 

Pastor's Pen - Assurance and Perseverance_edit.docx

[Affinity Info Bot]

The issue "[User File] Embedded PSD cannot be Collected or Linked, after Linking all other resources in 2 files, zooming in the document causes a hard crash" (REF: AF-722) has been fixed by the developers in internal build "2.4.0.2185".
This fix should soon be available as a customer beta and is planned for inclusion in the next customer release.
Customer beta builds are announced here and you can participate by following these instructions.
If you still experience this problem once you are using that build version (or later) please reply to this thread including @Serif Info Bot to notify us.

[Leigh]

We're sorry for the delay in replying @dlampel - we've been trying replicate your right click crash but without success.

Are you still getting the crash after updating 2.3? Would it be possible to send me copy of our Log.txt from %AppData%\Affinity\Publisher\2.0\

Are you using a wired or wireless mouse? Do you have any third party drivers/software installed for the mouse? Not sure if related but worth asking at this point.

[dlampel]

5 minutes ago, Leigh said:

Are you still getting the crash after updating 2.3? Would it be possible to send me copy of our Log.txt from %AppData%\Affinity\Publisher\2.0\

Are you using a wired or wireless mouse? Do you have any third party drivers/software installed for the mouse? Not sure if related but worth asking at this point.

Thank you for your response, Leigh.

I can understand the inability to replicate this problem, for it is certainly not consistent. But, to answer your question, yes, it still occurs from time to time even in 2.3 (Note: I am now back to running the Affinity EXE programs, instead of the apps. They seem more stable for me.). Attached is the Log.txt file you requested. I use a wired mouse  (Logitech) without any third-party drivers or software--just your basic mouse. And this errant behavior never occurs in any other programs.

Although it may not be pertinent to this bug, I am still (once in a while) experiencing the same inexplicable crash mentioned in my original post, which seems to occur more often than not when opening a second file. The program freezes for about 10-15 seconds, then disappears.

Log.txt

[dlampel]

6 hours ago, Leigh said:

we've been trying replicate your right click crash but without success.

Are you still getting the crash after updating 2.3?

A timely follow-up: Just a moment ago I opened one of my newsletter templates, pasted in the text of the lead article, right-clicked on a word marked as misspelled (even though it wasn't), and Publisher paused for about 5 seconds, then disappeared.

[Leigh]

On 12/18/2023 at 1:30 PM, dlampel said:

Thank you for your response, Leigh.

I can understand the inability to replicate this problem, for it is certainly not consistent. But, to answer your question, yes, it still occurs from time to time even in 2.3 (Note: I am now back to running the Affinity EXE programs, instead of the apps. They seem more stable for me.). Attached is the Log.txt file you requested. I use a wired mouse  (Logitech) without any third-party drivers or software--just your basic mouse. And this errant behavior never occurs in any other programs.

Although it may not be pertinent to this bug, I am still (once in a while) experiencing the same inexplicable crash mentioned in my original post, which seems to occur more often than not when opening a second file. The program freezes for about 10-15 seconds, then disappears.

Log.txt 5.2 kB · 3 downloads

Thanks for log file and the additional information.

Sorry to be a pain but would it be possible to delete the Log.txt that's currently in %AppData%\Affinity\Publisher\2.0\ and then launch the app again to generate a new one. Once you've done this can you send this again to me and also include a screenshot of the devices listed in Edit > Settings > Performance > Renderer?

[dlampel]

12 minutes ago, Leigh said:

Sorry to be a pain but would it be possible to

Not at all. I appreciate the efforts to ferret out the cause of these problems.

Log.txt

[Leigh]

Thanks for your patience. I've had a look at your Log.txt and it looks like the drivers for your GTX 1650 SUPER are 31.0.15.3619 but the latest version is 31.0.15.4609. It also looks like your UHD Graphics 630 drivers are 27.20.100.9664 but the latest version is 31.0.101.2125. Is it possible to try and update to latest version for both to see if that improves things?

Also, have you been able to try the 2.4 beta to see if that provides better stability?