Affinity Publisher is causing Beachball of Death after 10-20 minutes of use.

[Darkon Turas]

I've been trying to recreate my character sheet for the Marvel Super Heroes RPG using publisher. On Windows 10, it causes a BSOD on save. On my Mac Pro (mid-2010) running macOS Mojave, it will cause a beachball of death after about ten to twenty minutes of use. At which point I have to power off the system and continue on the next boot. Rinse and repeat until finished. This is totally unacceptable for a pro product.

[stokerg]

Hi Darkon Turas,

If you see this post it's actually not possible for Affinity to cause a BSOD, so the cause of that will be something else, likely a software driver or possibly hardware related.

It would be interesting to see the .afpub file for this, could you either attach it or upload it to our Dropbox here and i'll se i can spot what the issue is.

[Darkon Turas]

If I'm reading that horribly low resolution BSOD, there is a system service exception in ddflt.sys. I can't provide a file that can't be saved, but here is a screen shot. The section with four columns is a table.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Darkon Turas
clarification

[Darkon Turas]

With the ever-crashing headway I made on the Mac Pro, the nearly finished file looks like this.

MSH Character Sheet.afpub

[Darkon Turas]

I get the BSOD on save even with a new blank document. Don't forget the locking up on the Mac version.

[Darkon Turas]

Mind you that this is the only program on the system with this issue.

[emmrecs01]

@Darkon Turas

Did you read @stokerg's reply and especially the post he linked to?

In essence, it is impossible for any of the Affinity range to cause a BSOD, for the reasons given in that linked post.

[Darkon Turas]

Reading a post doesn't change the fact that its going straight to a BSOD on save. Try being helpful please.

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, Darkon Turas said:

Reading a post doesn't change the fact that its going straight to a BSOD on save.

But that does not mean the issue is in Affinity Publisher, just that it is what triggers it. It is not that uncommon for only one or a few apps to do that because not all apps access all the same system level functions or do so in the same way or in the same order.

[Darkon Turas]

But we are addressing that this thing is only pulling up a generic save dialog box, which is a standard API call. If the windows save dialog was corrupt, I wouldn't be able to save with any app. You're also ignoring the entire macOS issue as well. It isn't useless one only one platform, but two.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Darkon Turas said:

But we are addressing that this thing is only pulling up a generic save dialog box, which is a standard API call. If the windows save dialog was corrupt, I wouldn't be able to save with any app.

Not true. The so-called BSOD or "blue screen of death" (technically a system stop error) occurs only when the OS itself encounters a fatal error it cannot recover from. There are only a few things that can cause that: hardware issues (like defective RAM or a malfunctioning GPU or CPU), faulty hardware drivers, or issues in the low-level software processes running in the Windows hybrid kernel.

Application level software cannot be the direct cause of any of these things regardless of whatever calls they might make, in part because as long as the OS & the hardware is functioning properly, there is no way for the calls applications make to access low level processes directly. However, if for any reason the OS or its hardware is not all functioning properly, then any number of 'generic' calls that involve low level processes can leave the system in an unstable state, including calls an application might make prior to the one that triggers the fatal error. Since different application workflows make calls in different sequences & they do not all make the same calls, it is entirely possible that only one or a few applications will trigger the BSOD.

[Darkon Turas]

Additional information on windows. The BSOD only happens when saving to a OneDrive folder.

 

Now is anyone going to tell me why the macOS version goes non-responsive after 10-20 minutes?

[Fixx]

8 hours ago, Darkon Turas said:

Now is anyone going to tell me why the macOS version goes non-responsive after 10-20 minutes?

Have you checked memory usage? Might be a memory leak. See Activity Monitor.

[Patrick Connor]

Regarding the Windows issue, please read the (rewritten) FAQ which says that Microsoft have now fixed this bug in December's Windows Patch. After installing the Microsoft update you should be able to use OneDrive again