03-24-2011 08:30 AM
Over the last few weeks we've seen constant crashes in the TestStand Sequence Editor and I was wondering if anyone else has seen this. The crashes come at seemingly random times although it's always during some kind of action (button press, selection, copy/paste etc.). We're seeing these crashes on the 2 identically configured test stations that we are using and no test hardware interaction is involved. Here's the platform information:
TestStand 2010 (Version 4.5.0.310)
LabVIEW 2010 SP1 (Version 10.0.1 32 bit)
Windows 7 SP1 (32 bit)
Dell Precision T3500 with 4.0 GB RAM
The crash reports are almost always the same and mention a "tipstsf.dll" as the fault module. I looked around and it appears that this DLL is a tablet PC function which could explain why there's an interaction issue. Here's an example crash report:
Description:
Stopped working
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: SeqEdit.exe
Application Version: 4.5.0.310
Application Timestamp: 4cd0be30
Fault Module Name: tiptsf.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7600.16385
Fault Module Timestamp: 4a5bdb20
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0000197f
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1033
As the failures have been occurring I've been logging the actions. Here's a sample:
2011/03/18 9:05 AM Pressed Run button
2011/03/18 9:10 AM Running a sequence, paused for debug, looking at variables.
2011/03/18 9:14 AM Pressed Ctrl-D to close completed executions.
2011/03/18 10:56 AM Removed breakpoint in sequence
2011/03/18 4:49 PM Set breakpoints in the sequence and was looking at watch data.
2011/03/18 4:54 PM Copied a step between sequences.
I've always found TestStand to be a stable platform but it's been many years since I've used the latest version of TS, LV and Windows at the same time. I figured I would throw this out there in case someone else has seen it.
Any information would be appreciated.
John Morrissey
03-24-2011 09:40 AM
03-24-2011 10:14 AM
Hi Ray,
No, I haven't tried that yet, but I will investigate it further. This is a standard desktop PC without any tablet inputs, so my first inclination is to uninstall/disable any Tablet PC functions, but I don't see that they are active.
John
03-24-2011 11:00 AM
Maybe as its Windows 7, there is touch screen input but if you haven't got that either then maybe you can just unstall/disable, not sure if that is an options.
04-05-2011 08:13 AM
After working with a National Instrument applications engineer for about a week I was able to set up a demonstration for them to observe remotely. The crash is repeatable and is something they need to look at more closely. Not sure where the root cause is, but it appears to be somewhere in either NI or Microsoft code. They asked that I send them a crash dump output from a debugger so they can resolve the problem on their end.
In the meantime, as a work around, Manooch showed me how to turn off the Windows 7 Tablet PC Components which makes the problem go away (these are enabled by default). If you come across this issue and don't think you need the Table PC Components, you can disable them by following the procedure below.
Control Panel - > “Programs and Features”
On the left side select “Turn Windows Features on or off”
Scroll down and uncheck the “Tablet PC Components” box.
Press OK and allow the PC to restart.
This was tested and the crash no longer happens when I followed the process to make it occur. Maybe a Windows 7 hotfix in the future will fix this problem.
04-05-2011 09:23 AM
Thanks for keeping everyone informed