XMetaL 6 crashes

[RichardTruscott]

I'm using XMetaL Enterpirse Version 6 having just upgraded from 5.  Its a Dell Desktop PC (optiplex 775) running Windows XP. It's crashing at all sorts of odd times and occassions so its hard to connect the crashes with any particular set of events. Some times its on saving, sometimes on inserting an element or inserting text. I have unistalled 5 as part of the version 6 installation and I've tried repairing V6 and unistalling and reinstalling it.

My PC has McAfee security.

Just by chance since the upgrade I have only used the “composite” DTD and have not used a DITA map.

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[gcrews]

I’m having the same kind of issues. Have you tried http://forums.xmetal.com/index.php/topic,526.0.html

Apparently it helped some people but my Xmetal 6.0 still has issues.  I mostly do just compiles and toolkit tweaking so it doesn’t bother me too much.  I wonder if there is some interaction with another piece of software. Do you have MacAfee on your system by any chance?

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[mmoulder]

We saw the same issue. Uninstall McAfee and your issues should go away.

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[gcrews]

As much as I would love to do that it’s not really an option in our department since McAfee is used system wide. Perhaps there a work around such as excluding xmetal60.exe or its folder or on access scan or script scanning? I tried adding Xmetal to the exclude lists but they are overwritten with company policy a few min later. My Xmetal 6.0 pretty much crashes consistently when you use any kind of dialog box in Xmetal, the crash is just delayed. I will try some experiments and see if I can find a solution, if not Xmetal 6.0 is pretty much unusable for anyone in our department or company for that matter. Are there any bugs that have been reported or fixed related to this that future releases will cause Xmetal will be functional again?

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[Derek Read]

I'd like to try to figure out if McAfee really is the trigger here. It sure sounds like it given that three different organizations are (or were) seeing crashes with it installed and two say removing it is a good option.

gcrews: Can you let us know which Windows version you are running and the exact name of the McAfee application and version you have installed? We don't normally test 3rd party software but in this instance I'd like to at least figure out if this does seem to be real. If it is, perhaps there is something we can do (even if that just means contacting McAfee). This type of software (virus scanner) most likely needs to do something low level with the system and it may be altering the way our software expects Windows to behave.

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[RichardTruscott]

The system I'm running is Windows XP and McAfee Virus Scan Enterpirse + AntiSpyware Enterpirse Version 8.7.0i.  This is a coroporate system and I cant turn it off.

I did put in a trouble ticket 00006891 in about this and did not get far apart from a suggestion that it was due to registry problems.  I did get our IT people to have a look at my PC and they cleared all temporary files and ran Disk Check.  After this was done all seemed well, but the crashes have returned.

I do use two monitors, but I have checked it out with only one monitor and the crashes still happen.

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[Derek Read]

I have now been using an installation of XMetaL Author Enterprise 6.0.0.122 on XP for about a week with McAfee Virus Scan Enterprise + AntiSpyware Enterprise Version 8.7.0 (a 90 day version) installed and have not seen any crashes yet. You also specifically mentioned IE 7 so I've got that installed as well.

That doesn't mean that McAfee definitely isn't the trigger in this case, it might just mean I haven't configured it exactly the same. I have tried all the settings I can find though, and used them each for at least 1/2 day. I've specifically had “Access Protection” turned on most of the time as that seems to be the most intrusive (it even stops admins from installing software). I've had the “ScriptScan” feature on almost all the time (it was on by default).

With “ScriptScan” on I see lots of apps (XMetaL, Adobe Reader and IE for example) listed in the McAfee log file with one file in particular always being listed as having been “blocked” (in the case of XMetaL it is the only file ever listed). The file is [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index.dat]index.dat[/url] (used by IE to keep track of history and such). XMetaL does not use this file directly, it must be listed because XMetaL embeds IE for some rendering capabilities (in a few dialogs and in the Page Preview) and it appears that IE always reads and writes to this file when new “pages” are opened (in our case local HTML files), even when it is embedded as an ActiveX control (as “shell.explorer”).

I'll keep plugging away at this, but I don't have much hope at the moment that we're going to see a crash related directly to McAfee (unless we've missed some magic setting we haven't tried yet).

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[RichardTruscott]

Have you been able to make any progress on this problem?  It is still happening and is reaching the point where Xmetal is becoming unusable.  If this problem is not near a resolution I shall have to go back to the previous version.  Please let me know if there has been any progress.

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[Su-Laine Yeo]

Yes, we had a breakthrough on reproducing the problem last week, and are continuing to investigate it.

This is probably the same issue as the one described here, which involves a conflict with McAfee
Antivirus and can be addressed by configuring the antivirus software: http://forums.xmetal.com/index.php/topic,526.30.html . The title of the thread refers to map editor crashes, but the McAfee Antivirus conflict affects other XMetaL features as well.

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[RichardTruscott]

Well done! Thanks for finding this, I was begining to doubt my sanity! I will get our IT support to make the changes to McAfee and let you know how it goes. 

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[RichardTruscott]

It's early days yet but, my IT people have made the changes to McAfee (30 mins ago) and so far NO CRASHES!

I guess you've still got to fix something, but this is a good workaround.

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[Su-Laine Yeo]

Hi everyone,

I've put a summary of the issue here: http://forums.xmetal.com/index.php/topic,915.msg2883.html#msg2883

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