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PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2017 2:11 am
by River Cricket
PeerCtrl is reliably crashing Buzz.

It's impossible to cause a crash "on demand" - which makes this immensely frustrating to report, because I like to at least have some tangible reproduction process when reporting a bug. But, basically, once I drop a PeerCtrl machine, Buzz will eventually crash. Whether that crash is in one minute or ten minutes, however, is up to chance.

What always eventually happens is that, when opening assignment settings, I get a "blank" screen (not entirely blank - see this image). At this point, Buzz is doomed. Any attempt to open a file dialog (file > open or file > save as) will freeze/crash Buzz. Without trying to open a file dialog, within a minute, Buzz will crash anyway.

I've tried everything to trigger this bug, but it really does seem to be a random-but-definite bug. Sometimes I get a "blank screen" the very first time I drop a PeerCtrl into the bmx and open it. Sometimes - with the exact same bmx - I can drop a PeerCtrl in and make assignations, close the assign window and open it numerous times, and not trigger the bug. I've tried opening the assignment window while playing a loop, after playing a loop, with and without adding extra tracks to the default "16 length 1 track" 00-track you get when dropping a new Generator - none will instantly cause the "blank screen" crash, but none will "cure" it, either - Buzz will always crash.

The most useful bit of information I can provide is a crash screen I got when I closed Buzz after a "blank screen", but before the automatic-crash:

Image

(pardon the grey text - by the time I managed to hit Print Screen the standard "Buzz has stopped responding" popup had happened and the window lost focus - note that the filepath is likely referring to something internal, as I have no such path on my own system)

I'm using the latest versions of Buzz and PeerCtrl, on a 64-bit Windows 7 install. I've tried registering and re-registering envelope.ocx, and tried using both the 76KB "old" version of the PeerCtrl .dll AND the 1,712KB version which I believe was an attempt to fix a bug similar to the one I'm experiencing. I'm 100% certain that PeerCtrl is causing - or at the very least triggering - the crash. Without a PeerCtrl, I can leave (and have left :shock: ) Buzz up for days without a crash, but add a PeerCtrl into any bmx, and it crashes within a coffee break.

I'm perfectly willing to troubleshoot this for as long as anyone's patience lasts.

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Sun Mar 12, 2017 2:22 am
by River Cricket
In case it helps, here's what Dependency Walker has to say:

Image

(everything below ishims.dll in the Module pane is okay - just "x64" instead of "x86")

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 1:54 pm
by Joachip
The error happens in the desctructor, so it seems to be related to something being deallocated or removed. This could explain why it doesn't happen right away.

Maybe try the big guns first: Install a new instance of Buzz in a different folder and see if this also has the problem.

Looks like maybe some dll is missing? (It's odd that it fails with a "file not found" error during calling a deconstructor btw.

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2017 6:56 pm
by UNZ
did you get your peerctrl from here?
https://sourceforge.net/projects/btdsys ... rce=navbar

if not, do so because these are the versions that are actually relevant for new buzz.
joachip: you should probably update robotplanet site with these btw, the latest version on there is 23 Dec 2003...

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2019 1:31 pm
by River Cricket
So, I know this is an ancient thread, but I'd like to provide an update just in case someone stumbles into this thread in the future.

I had the proper PeerCtrls, as UNZ suggested. After about a zillion cycles of deleting, reinstalling, reregistering envelope, redownloading various VB redistributable packages, updating Windows, trying the 1.5 version, and so on, I got it to the point where I could usually open the Assignation window, but after doing so Buzz would usually crash as soon as I tried to save the .BMX.

A clean install would work, but I have so many machines and a fair amount of custom settings that I'm used to, so "sticking" to a clean install was a pipe dream, staggering around with the "basically works except for PeerCtrl" version was less of a headache than trying to start over from scratch. So, I spent the past two years only using PeerCtrl as a last resort (usually for automating several different parameters off of a single PeerLFO).

But finally, yesterday, PeerCtrl crashes pissed me off for the last time, and I sat down and started really braining it out, comparing a "clean" install to the "filthy" ( :mrgreen: ) install to see just which of the various .DLLs were "essential to Buzz" and which could be jettisoned.

It was then that I realized that I had PeerCtrl machines in Generators/PeerCtrll/ in addition to Generators/. :oops:

Deleting the /PeerCtrl/ folder from /Generators/ seems to have solved everything.


So I guess in the future, "make sure the PeerCtrl machines are installed to the root /Generators/ folder, and there's no second versions secretly hiding in their own subfolder as well" would be a good first-line question to ask dummies like me. :)

(I think there was some piece of documentation for something PeerCtrl-related that said "add this to your PeerCtrl folder", so I read that as "folder called PeerCtrl" and not "folder where PeerCtrl is", but it's been such a long and winding road that I'll probably never know for sure how this happened)

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 11:23 am
by polac
But does Buzz really scan all the sub directories in generators, it's new to me that Buzz does this. But good to know what caused these crashes.

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2019 4:42 pm
by mcbpete
Yeah I didn't think you could go any folders deep in either Gear\Generators or Gear\Effects

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 1:44 am
by River Cricket
mcbpete wrote:Yeah I didn't think you could go any folders deep in either Gear\Generators or Gear\Effects
It's weird, but all I know is that I have a BMX (and a list of things to do once it's loaded) that will crash when accessing save-as 100% of the time if I have my \Gear\Generators\PeerCtrl\ folder, and 0% of the time if that folder is deleted, with no other changes in between. The full sublime workings of Buzz and peer generators are simply beyond the comprehension of one mere mortal :D

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 11:04 am
by IXix
River Cricket wrote:I have a BMX (and a list of things to do once it's loaded) that will crash when accessing save-as 100% of the time if I have my \Gear\Generators\PeerCtrl\ folder, and 0% of the time if that folder is deleted, with no other changes in between.
What's in the Generators\PeerCtrl\ folder? Mine contains:
  • Mixer GUI.dll
  • PVST MIDI Bridge.dll
  • XY Window.dll
  • Docs folder
If you can share the bmx I might be able to figure out what's going wrong.

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 4:28 pm
by magmavander
In mine there is more files.

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Fri Mar 01, 2019 5:02 pm
by IXix
magmavander wrote:In mine there is more files.
Nothing unusual though. I bet River Cricket has a dll in there that doesn't belong. I've never delved into the code for PeerCtrl but I wonder if it just assumes any dll in that folder is one of its input plugins and doesn't do any checks.

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2019 11:20 am
by mcbpete
mcbpete wrote:Yeah I didn't think you could go any folders deep in either Gear\Generators or Gear\Effects
Apologies, this was possibly misleading -To clarify I mean: other than associated files used by a particular effect or generator (like in this instance PeerCtrl's GUI and Bridge linked libraries) you shouldn't go any folder deeper than Gear\Generators or Gear\Effects

Re: PeerCtrl crashing Buzz, any ideas?

Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2019 2:35 pm
by IXix
mcbpete wrote:
mcbpete wrote:Yeah I didn't think you could go any folders deep in either Gear\Generators or Gear\Effects
Apologies, this was possibly misleading -To clarify I mean: other than associated files used by a particular effect or generator (like in this instance PeerCtrl's GUI and Bridge linked libraries) you shouldn't go any folder deeper than Gear\Generators or Gear\Effects
I understood and you're correct, Buzz doesn't look in subfolders for machines. I wonder if River Cricket had the actual PeerCtrl.dll in Generators\PeerCtrl\ and so PeerCtrl tried to load itself as a plugin?