Upgrade to 6.0 — map editor crash?

[cdybdahl]

First of all, let me take a moment to say what a great job has been done with the 6.0 release. The background spellcheck enhancement was a much-needed improvement, and the new Webhelp deliverable type is fantastic.

I would love to be able to recommend the upgrade to my users, but I have been experiencing a problem with the map editor that will prevent me from doing so until it is resolved.

The following steps cause this problem for me:

1. Open an existing DITA map using the map editor.
2. Expand an existing topichead in the map view.
3. Click once on the topicref under which I want to insert a new topic.
4. Click Insert > Topic Reference….
5. In the Topic Title: field, type the title for the new topic, and click Create…
6. Select the topic type (in this case, it is a task), click OK, and save the new topic.
7. Click OK to insert All topics in the file into the map. The new topic appears in the map, but is not nested beneath the topic selected in step 3 (this behavior differs from 5.5, which inserted new topics as children of whatever was selected in the map editor).
8. Click the right arrow in the map editor to move the new topic to the desired location (as a child of the selected topicref).
9. XMetaL crashes at this point with the error message that reads as follows:

xmetal60.exe – Application Error
The instruction at “0x77124972” referenced memory at “0x01966810”. The memory could not be “read”.

The first number appears to be static, and the memory location is variable each time I get the error.

This does not happen with every new topicref I insert, but it happens often enough to be more than annoying. With previous versions, I have experienced crashes when closing XMetaL, but that was not much of a problem. This, should it turn out to be an application problem, is.

It is certainly possible that this is an issue with something else running on my machine — it might be useful if others could try the steps above to see if they can duplicate my error.

Thanks!

Reply

[AndrewinKC]

I am running into the same issue (with the 30-day trial version of XMetaL). I am trying to create a new DITA map and topics. Invariably, as I go to save the DITA map or insert a topic; XMetaL crashes.

Most of my team is using XMetaL 5.5 with no such issues. I was hoping to learn XMetaL and evaluate the possibility of upgrading. The WebHelp output is very appealling to me.

Anything I can do to try and resolve this so I can continue looking at the new version?

AndrewinKC

Reply

[mmoulder]

I am seeing even more random results with XMetal 6.0 crashing all the time on XP for multiple users. Seems to happen the most when I switch from another window to Xmetal but not always the case. Ours is so random, I can't figure out a pattern, at least you have a pattern. Seems to be working great on my one Windows 7 test box.

Reply

[cdybdahl]

Sorry to hear about everyone's troubles, but glad that I'm not alone.
I've had to revert back to 5.5, unfortunately, on my company-issued machine.

One thing I've noticed as I've tested on machines with different configurations is that the presence of absence of certain other applications seems to have an effect.

If other users experiencing this problem could report what antivirus software they use, it might help to confirm my hypothesis.

Reply

[AndrewinKC]

I am using McAfee VirusScan Enterprise version. If that helps.

Sorry to hear about everyone's troubles, but glad that I'm not alone.
I've had to revert back to 5.5, unfortunately, on my company-issued machine.

One thing I've noticed as I've tested on machines with different configurations is that the presence of absence of certain other applications seems to have an effect.

If other users experiencing this problem could report what antivirus software they use, it might help to confirm my hypothesis.

Reply

[Su-Laine Yeo]

Hi everyone,

I haven't yet been able to reproduce the issue with the Map Editor crashing (Murphy's 25th collorary: If anything can go wrong, it will on your customer's machines and not on the Support team's machines).

XMetaL 6.0 has some new options that affect how the Map Editor works. You can see these options by opening any DITA topic and then clicking Tools > DITA Options.  Can you try unchecking the two checkboxes at the bottom of this dialog, and let us know if that helps?

[img]http://img35.yfrog.com/img35/7054/ditaoptions.png[/img]

Reply

[AndrewinKC]

Su-Laine,

Thanks for getting back to us on this. I tried your suggestion and it seemed to work at first. I got as far as being able to save a DITA Map. It crashed as soon as I tried saving the concept DITA topic I was inserting into the DITA Map.

Thanks,

Hi everyone,

I haven't yet been able to reproduce the issue with the Map Editor crashing (Murphy's 25th collorary: If anything can go wrong, it will on your customer's machines and not on the Support team's machines).

XMetaL 6.0 has some new options that affect how the Map Editor works. You can see these options by opening any DITA topic and then clicking Tools > DITA Options.  Can you try unchecking the two checkboxes at the bottom of this dialog, and let us know if that helps?

Reply

[AndrewinKC]

OK – here is a bit more background. I can create concept and reference topics with no seeming limitations. I even switch between the different views and generate output.

The problems arise once I create a DITA Map. I was able to insert two topics. As soon as I tried to move the topics using the arrows in the Map Editor – CRASH!!!!

I hope this helps out in tracking down this issue.

Reply

[cdybdahl]

So… earlier when the potential conflict with McAfee was identified, I uninstalled 6.0 and reverted back to 5.5, so I could still work in XMetaL.

When I saw the latest troubleshooting step, I went ahead and uninstalled 5.5 again and re-installed 6.0 again. I didn't want to report back before I had a couple of days working with the freshly installed 6.0 under my belt, but the crashes have gone away entirely.

The only difference I can think of between the first time I installed 6.0 and this time is that I rebooted following the uninstall of 5.5 the second time around.

So on my end, this problem appears to be solved.

Reply

[cdybdahl]

I will have to retract my previous post — the fix seems to have been temporary (and just outside of what I thought a reasonable threshold of time).

The crashing has returned for me after ~2 solid days of use. On another test machine, reinstalling 6.0 did not solve the problem for any period of time.

De-selecting the two check boxes under Topic references in the DITA Options dialog (as mentioned above) does not appear to have any effect.

Reply

[AndrewinKC]

OK – I tried to uninstall and then reinstall XMetaL 6. Still ran into the problem with working in the Map Editor crashing XMetaL.

Decided to go ahead and play around with building some simple reference topics. everything worked fine… until I decided to add some conditional text. The first insert worked fine. I then selected an existing paragraph and selected properties, conditions, CRASH!

I didn't even get to see the dialog box where it asks you for the Audience, Platform, and so on.

I am more than halfway through my evaluation period of 6. Looks like my team will stick the 5.5 release for now.

Reply

[Su-Laine Yeo]

Thanks everyone for the reports. It looks like at least two organizations that are reporting crashes with XMetaL 6.0 are using McAfee antivirus software. So it would be really helpful for us to know the following:

1) Is anyone seeing an unusual number of crashes with XMetaL 6.0 who is not using McAfee antivirus software?

2) If you are seeing crashes with XMetaL 6.0 and you are using McAfee antivirus software: Can you try booting one of these problem machines into Windows “safe mode”? I'm hoping that might allow you to bypass the anti-virus software to run XMetaL Author Enterprise without it running. You may wish to do a complete scan of the system prior to this and (if really paranoid) disconnect from your network just in case.

Reply

[cdybdahl]

Hi Su-Laine,

Yes, Derek actually asked that I try that in an e-mail conversation. I was able to boot one machine into safe mode and the problem persisted.

To recap briefly, I have four test machines. Two are company-owned and cannot be booted to safe mode. One is a personal machine of mine, which does not exhibit this behavior (and does not have McAfee installed), and the fourth is a coworker's personal machine that does have McAfee installed (this is the one that we tried your suggestion on).

I will also say that I agree with Andrew's reports that this crash may not be isolated to the map editor. It has now also occurred for me when using the attribute inspector. I have not tried applying conditions as he describes in his most recent post, but that is interesting as it is also attribute-related.

Please keep us posted on your progress, and let me know if there is anything else I can do to help troubleshoot. I understand that it is impossible to replicate all possible client system configurations in a QA environment.

Reply

[AndrewinKC]

The following McAfee apps are running on my desktop:

• VirusScan Enterprise v8.5i
• McAfee Agent v4.0.0.1345
• McAfee DLP Agent v2.2.200.11
• Hercules Remediation Agent v4.5.0

I cannot boot into safe mode on my corporate desktop. I was able disable the VirusScan engine. I was able to recreate the crash by adding a condition to some text in  topic (specifically, adding a Linux platform condition; curiously, I was able to add a Windows platform tag previously without crashing. I'll play around with this again).

I will go ahead and download the XMetaL trial to my personal laptop. I have McAfee loaded on this machine; so I can try to see if we can narrow things down a bit.

Thanks,

AndrewinKC

Reply

[mmoulder]

Is anybody seeing this on a Windows 7 machine? I don't see any problems on Windows 7 but I do Windows XP and Vista. It could be cause there is no McAfee products on Windows 7 and they are on XP and I am not sure on Vista.

Reply

[Author]

Posts