UI / Rendering - App Crashes / Stops responding

[howiec]

When a lot of docs are open (admittedly, way too many) expanding/unhiding the ribbon & some other interactions causes the UI / renderer to stop updating (unusable) & potentially fully crash the editor.

This may also happen more often when a at least one of the open documents is very large/long.

Usually the entire window stops updating/responding but sometimes some UI elements/areas stop updating too (see example below).

However, using a hotkey to close the active document (e.g., CTRL + W) can sometimes restore the UI temporarily until it happens again shortly after to the next document.

Is there some sort of limit / memory setting that could be increased to avoid this issue?
(PC has 32GB RAM & plenty available. Editor's memory management set to Auto)

image.png

Thanks,
Howie

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, howiec

Before we start, is this happening in the current latest release (10.6.0.396)? If you are running an older build, please first update and see if the issue persists. Assuming it does remain in the current version, please see below:

Since you mentioned that sometimes it full crashes the editor, and sometimes it seems to simply "hang", or cause the UI to stop rendering, I will need to ask for both:
1. A Crash Dump (these are created automatically in the current release, and will be located here:

• %localappdata%\CrashDumps\PDFX

2. A Process dump the next time that the Rendering stops, but the app has not yet "full crashed"

• https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowledgeba ... estigation

Once you have both of those, please place them in a zip file, and upload them here:
https://files.pdf-xchange.com/s/Xrmg6tisNHkJRS9
(Link will expire in a few days, let me know if you need more time)

Let me know when the upload is complete, and I will then send them up to the Dev team for review. Hopefully this shows us what the cause is and helps to identify a solution.

Kind regards,

[howiec]

Before we start, is this happening in the current latest release (10.6.0.396)?
[...]
1. A Crash Dump
[...]
2. A Process dump the next time that the Rendering stops, but the app has not yet "full crashed"
[...]
Hopefully this shows us what the cause is and helps to identify a solution.

Hi Daniel,

I can reproduce the issue very consistently & would totally send the ~2.5GB crash/process dumps but am unfortunately not allowed to do so due to the confidential & proprietary info/data of the .PDFs that are likely contained there.

As I was trying to reproduce the issue, once I closed a significant percentage of documents & editor windows, the "bug" did not manifest, so it seems extremely likely that it's some sort of UI/renderer-related memory/cache limit issue (or something along those lines).

Would you be able to forward at least that to the dev(s)?

It should be pretty straightforward for them to open multiple, large .PDFs in multiple editor windows & then try to toggle hiding/unhiding the ribbon, etc.

In the meantime, I'll see if I can reproduce the issue with non-sensitive .PDFs.

Thanks,
Howie

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, howiec

I have passed along the report already, but so far our tests have been unsuccessful. The actual number of unique "heavy" files we keep on hand is rather small (we don't often need to work with them personally, beyond throwaway cases where due to contained user data or other security policies, we need to destroy sample files after addressing the issue).

We will keep trying and see what we can do, but if you manage to reproduce the crash with your non-sensitive files, it would be great to see the crash dump that results from that.

Kind regards,

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello,

A quick followup:
First, The dev team noticed the vague wording used in your initial post "potentially crash", and we wanted to confirm, does your Editor fully crash (close without warning or error messages) on its own, or has the situation so far only been hanging, and you manually choose to force close the app before any "crash" happens.

Second, Can you tell us more about your environment? what version of windows are you running, is this a x86, x64 or AMR64 windows installation?

Kind regards,

[howiec]

First, The dev team noticed the vague wording used in your initial post "potentially crash", and we wanted to confirm, does your Editor fully crash (close without warning or error messages) on its own, or has the situation so far only been hanging, and you manually choose to force close the app before any "crash" happens.

Sorry for the late reply. Yes, sometimes the app completely crashes, hence the multi-gigabyte crash dump .dmp files.

Second, Can you tell us more about your environment? what version of windows are you running, is this a x86, x64 or AMR64 windows installation?

Sure:

Windows 11 x64 Enterprise
Version 22H2
Build 22621.5472

Thanks again for your help.

I'm guessing a simple way to reproduce this issue is to create a mock open docs list of say 250 .PDFs.
I'll try copying a bunch of "regular" size .PDFs (some with non-trivial engineering drawings) to test this out with.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, howiec

I am sorry to say, even in testing with just under 400 fairly large duplicated documents, I still haven't been able to reproduce this... I have however, passed this information along to our Dev team. Hopefully they have some input to offer with those details.

Kind regards,

[howiec]

I have however, passed this information along to our Dev team. Hopefully they have some input to offer with those details.

Thanks Daniel.

Last night I generated a bunch of .PDFs & was able to reproduce the issue again. I recorded a video & can zip the files I used along with some other data if desired.

Pls let me know if you can provide another upload link like previously.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, howiec

That is good to hear (that you are able to share the files I mean, not that the problem persists). The Dev team just informed me they wont be able to do anything more without seeing a crash dump, since we cannot reproduce it here, and I was worried with your earlier statement about confidential data that it might not have been a possibility.

Since you have prepared a new set of dumps, please upload them here:
https://files.pdf-xchange.com/s/aqKzpxKbHZpQqPc
Then let me know once it is complete, and I will be sure to pass up for review.

Kind regards,

[howiec]

since we cannot reproduce it here
[...]
Since you have prepared a new set of dumps, please upload them

Hi Daniel,

I uploaded a bunch of files.
Note that this initial crash dump occurred when trying to open more files after the "UI corruption" issue.
The video shows an example of the corruption.

I'm surprised this can't be reproduced on your end. I uploaded a bunch of example .PDFs you can use.

Thanks,
Howie

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, howiec

Thank you for those! I see them on the file server, and have just passed them along for review.

Kind regards,

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello,

I have good news - The Dev team found the cause of the issue, and have said it should be addressed in time for our next release, planned early august.

I should note that at such large quantities of opened documents (In your example, you had ~430 files opened), some performance issues should be expected, and that would happen sooner on less powerful devices. I suppose in my tests I should have tried to open even more than I did.

Regardless, In the next release we have optimized the process, so you should be able to have well over 1000 documents opened at once (In the 64 bit version), without experiencing any such issues (though if the previous amount was already "way too many" I doubt you will ever want to open enough that this issue could come back.

Kind regards,

[howiec]

Hi Dan,

Firstly, thanks so much for your efforts in dealing with this along with the numerous other issues that I see in these forums.

Pls pass along my gratitude to the dev team & any others involved!

Yes, I have to admit that this is an excessive amount of docs to have open simultaneously.
That's where I was hoping to use the Saved Sessions feature so that I could load up different sessions for different projects &/or workflows.

So hopefully the Saved Sessions feature can be optimized too to prevent slowdowns.

Cheers,
Howie

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, howiec

Indeed, tweaking sessions is a more involved process than this is, but those would benefit from improvements overall.

I should also make one small addendum to my last post. While I said the "next release", I was informed just a few minutes ago that we would be releasing a "very small" point build early next week (10.6.1), to address a recently reported vulnerability, and a small handful of notable issues which we have completed solutions for.
I do not know with certainty if this issue will be on that list (it might), so it is possible that its resolution could have to wait until august despite this extra build inserted into the schedule.

Kind regards,

[howiec]

Hi Dan,

No worries at all. This issue is definitely not a very urgent one.

Thanks for letting us know.

Regards,
Howie

[Dimitar - PDF-XChange]