Hi.

I'm experiencing some crashes in PCB Layout. So far I have not been able to find the actual cause of the crash, it seems to be somewhat random.

Right now it happened, when I wanted to replace the pattern of a component, and pressed the "add" button to open a library.
Last time it happened when I tried to export the drill layer to DXF.
I've seen it a few other times, but I don't remember those right now.

In any case, I can live with these crashes, as I've not yet lost anything from them. However, one thing that consistently happens is that after the first crash, when I then try to launch "PCB Layout" again, it shows the splash screen and then crashes again. To be able to restart the program without it crashing immediately on splash, I have to reboot Windows (7).

Is there something I can do to avoid this reboot? What can I provide you with so you can find the problem?

I'm a fairly experienced software developer (though mostly I develop on Linux), so it's ok if you get technical. I've not yet tried anything. Figured I'd ask here first.

Regards,
Tomas

You might want to try Microsoft DebugView:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... s/bb896647

I've tried it out. Seems like a useful program, however, diptrace pcb.exe does not generate anything before crashing.
Any other ideas?

There are a couple of programs from Microsoft that monitor a program's activity as it runs. One of them might give you a clue; for example it might turn out that a certain DLL is used right before each crash.

The tools are:

Process Monitor

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... s/bb896645

Process Explorer

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... s/bb896653

The best thing, of course is to get the DipTrace developers to duplicate the problem. This may not be easy; I have been using DipTrace for months and have had exactly one crash on an early beta (Win XP).

Having to restart windows is an interesting clue. Does task manager show anything running before you try and fail to restart that isn't running after a reboot? If so, does killing that process allow a restart without rebooting?

Another thing you might try: run DipTrace under Linux using WINE. Does the problem go away? Does it still crash but with a better error message? Does the WINE Debugger ( http://www.winehq.org/docs/winedev-guide/wine-debugger ) tell you anything interesting?

-- 30 Oct 2011, 12:01 --

Two other things that might be worth a mention.

First, DipTrace is always quite responsive to bug reports, but they don't work on weekends, so you may get an official response sometime on Monday.

Second, if you do decide to test it on WINE, please report your experiences. Any glitches? Performance OK? Lots of folks would want to know that info.

I will try your suggestions later today.

About Wine, so far I have failed to get any of the Diptrace applications to start at all through Wine. They all crash during splash.
Tested using Wine 1.3.31 on Archlinux x86-64.

Please provide us with the following information:
The crash happens when file open/save dialog appears ?
What version and build do you use?
What Windows version is on you machine?

I've figured out what was causing these crashes. Basically, when the Mach 3 software by ArtSoft is running, DipTrace software cannot be started. Strange.

I'm using Mach 3 to run my CNC when I mill my PCBs.

We tried to run Mach3 and Diptrace at the same time and they work fine. But in general, I think it is not good idea to run other software while Mach3 is working.