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Rob7713 Offline OP
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I am having a recurring problem with mIRC crashing. frown I've seen this problem with other people, too. In all cases, the error message consistently includes the bold text in the following error message:

Unhandled exception at 0x0042cbe4 in mirc_upp.exe: 0xC0000005:
Access violation reading location 0x032934e8.

I happen to be using UPP, so I reported the bug first on that forum and got the following reply:

"ah yes 0x0042cbe4. it's a bug in mirc actually. mirc doesn't check the requested memory so if your paging file has errors things could go wrong."

It seems to be connected to people exiting the fileserver or dcc chat by typing exit or by clicking the X. One of the others had it happen frequently. I wasn't seeing it that often, but the frequency seems to be increasing.

Is there any way that mIRC could possibly be modified to check the memory without a major modification? Is there anything that we can do to ensure that our page file does not have any errors in it? Since I'm not the only one who is having this error and since it is really a problem, is there any possibilty of getting a fix for this any time soon?

If others are seeing this problem, please speak up in here so Khaled will know.


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Quote:
"ah yes 0x0042cbe4. it's a bug in mirc actually. mirc doesn't check the requested memory so if your paging file has errors things could go wrong."

As a programmer who thought to know how memory paging worked, I would be pleased if somebody can explain what are these so-called errors in paging file crazy. Never heard of that. Whatever I doubt that any operating system would be stable for a long time with a damaged paging process... (I'm also experiencing the crash but my uptime is usually 3 or 4 weeks, rebooting only for the monthly Windoze updates).

Seems rather that some pointer is not correctly initialized and that the application would work 'hopefully' if the memory at this adress is (or not) zero. And this would very well explain why it crashes randomly. By experience, with this kind of bug, it depends of the machine (in particular the amount of RAM), on how many other applications are running at the same time, etc.

Whatever, this bug is really annoying and I also vote for a rapid fix. Please.

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Rob7713 Offline OP
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BTW, I'm running a system with an AMD Athlon XP 1700+ cpu at ~1476 MHz on an IWill KK266Plus motherboard with 1152 MB RAM, Xtasy GeForce 2 Ti 64 MB video card and I can supply other hardware specs, if needed. I have 4 hard drives with a total space of 313 GB. Operating System is Windows XP Pro with all security updates. Just in case it makes a difference, I also have Visual Studio .Net Enterprise Architect installed.

System information shows that at this moment I have
Total Physical Memory 1152 MB
Available Physical Memory 647.99 MB
Total Virtual Memory 3.26 GB
Available Virtual Memory 2.32 GB
Page File Space 2.13 GB

I think you can see from these specs that I'm not normally low on memory and this failure doesn't usually occur during a low memory state, as far as I can tell. It does occur on my computer at least once or twice a day, on average. I'm running a file server 24/7, so that may also be a factor in all of this and probably is one, but that is no excuse for ignoring a bug and not fixing it. mad If there is any other information that would be helpful to those who can DO something about fixing this bug, please let me know and I'll try to round it up. Meanwhile, everyone who has this bug should comment in here to let Khaled know this is not isolated.


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Lovely specs... possible solution - don't use windows XP (any version) :tongue:

Seriously I've seen many postings concerning mirc crashes and most of them occur with windows XP, so I have to wonder if that's the problem - sorry I don't have any solutions since I never encountered any crashing problems.

I use windows 2kpro and never had any sort of crash and my cpu is much older (about 3 years old) so it's not the latest and greatest of machines.

I'm sure Khaled and the rest who are involved in the actual programming of mirc will address the problems and the new version of mirc will correct these problems although we will have to wait a while before a new release. smile

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Quote:
Lovely specs... possible solution - don't use windows XP (any version)

Must agree with that laugh
But... I use W2K Pro also and I have the crash. And there are people crashing with all flavors of Windows (including 98, as some people said on the sysreset msg board). I'm not even sure that XP users are the majority. :tongue:
Whatever, when a system is stable with every application except one, the later is the faulty one, not the system (OS or hard), believe me. Especially when the crash is always the same: there are only 2 or 3 pc addresses of crash, and we know that it only happens on chat close (that's the reason why many -all?- fserver scripts are experiencing the problem).

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I find it strange - I use a fserve (sysreset to be specific) and still never had a crash.

If it's mirc then wouldn't everyone have the same problem? I'm beginning to wonder if there's something else running as well as mirc that causes it to crash... I usually have mirc, IE, FTP and perhaps my newsgroup program running all at the sametime and never experienced any problems.

Oh well I guess it's just a matter of waiting for the next release. smile

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Quote:
I find it strange - I use a fserve (sysreset to be specific) and still never had a crash.

Sysreset also... and crash frown
Whatever there's a long thread in the sysreset msg board about it. Some people have the crash, some others don't.
Also if you don't remain connected long enough, you won't see it. For example, the "faster" crash I had was 8 hours after the mIRC launching and the "slower" almost 1 week (yes: you read well, 7 days, I was happy and thought it was gone, but no blush). And to end with statistics, the average is something as 18 hours. This is the reason why I hope it will be fixed soon...

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Rob7713 Offline OP
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Quote:
I find it strange - I use a fserve (sysreset to be specific) and still never had a crash.

When I used to use Sysreset, I couldn't keep my mIRC running for more than 30 minutes at a time without that same crash occuring. crazy Since I switched to UPP, the frequency has dropped to once a day at most. At the time, I thought that it was something in Sysreset, and I still think there was something in it that contributed, but no one would even look at it over there. mad The guys at UPP immediately responded with an identification of the problem, smile so now it's up to Khaled to fix it. And since it seems to be happening to people using plain mIRC, Sysreset, UPP, and other scripts as well, on all different versions of Windows, it's pretty obvious that the problem lies in mIRC and needs to be fixed. So let's get some action going here. It would be nice to get at least a response from the moderator on this one. :tongue:


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"So let's get some action going here. It would be nice to get at least a response from the moderator on this one."

There are several moderators, not just one. Rest assured that Khaled (who is mIRC's only software developer) reads these forums. This area of the msg board exists so that ppl can report problems and they are investigated, honest.


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well i never got any problem with my M v6.12 and i also use winxp but original version with no patches

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It would be interesting to take a poll and find out (if people bother to vote) if their mirc crashes on a regular basis...

I suspect the numbers are small so I don't believe the problem just lies with mirc but I don't discount the problems you and some others have experienced. It's a pain and needs to be addressed.

I'm not surprised you got a reaction from one of the moderators. smile


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Rob7713 Offline OP
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Thanks for the response.

I just wanted to be sure that this situation was being noticed and acted upon. I was pretty upset by the way some folks ignored it on another forum and just acted like it was a non-issue, then got all huffy when I took them to task for it. This is happening to a lot more people than some people want to believe, but some of us will speak up and some won't. A poll would be a nice idea, but again some will vote and some won't. I operate on the premise that if the programmers don't know about the bugs, they can't possibly fix them, and the more they know about them, the easier it is to isolate them. Of course, I've been programming since 1975, so I do have a little bit of experience.

I'm basing my observation on the frequency of this occurence on what I'm reading on at least three different forums where I'm seeing amazingly similar complaints that center around an error message that comes back to the operating system saying that mIRC can't read memory at some specific location and that error crashes mIRC. The error is always associated with a DCC chat session or fserve session, which uses the same mechanism.


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Talea: "I'm not surprised you got a reaction from one of the moderators"
In many cases there simply isnt a need for, or any response a moderator could make, to add info or help. However since Rob specifically asked for a response, i gave him the only one possible: assuring him that reports are investigated. We dont do polls here, as mentioned simple yes/no results wouldnt help with tracking the problem down and its highly unlikely they would be representative.

Rob: Everyone is entitled to post their opinions politely, whether they agree or disagree. As im sure you know, some events only happen to some users under specific circumstances. The ppl who dont experience the event can only make suggestions as to possible causes and/or verify that it doesnt happen to them. Knowing the circumstances when it doesnt happen can be just as valuable as knowing when it does. As you said, the more info the better.

Again, any reports made anywhere on the forums are noticed and considered. A lack of any posted response from Khaled, Krejt, or a moderator doesnt mean they are being ignored.


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It was just a thought... smirk

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Rob7713 Offline OP
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I thought it was a good idea, too, Talea. I do appreciate your feedback, as well. Like ParaBrat said, they need to know both sides of the situation to diagnose the problem completely. smile


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Rob7713 Offline OP
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I just discovered additional information that may be useful. It seems that the presence of Visual Studio .Net or the .Net Framework may contribute to the frequency of the occurence of this bug. It may be that there are additional constraints placed on memory access by the .Net Framework that are not present when it is absent.


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I don't have .NET installed (no use for that :tongue:). So it is not the only reason why some of us are crashing randomly.
Btw, now 60 hours of continuous service without a crash cool

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Rob7713 Offline OP
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Well, it seems that having VS .Net OFF my system has extended my up time a bit. I made it to almost 3 full days and just now crashed with that same old error that this thread is all about. So, as Rink observed, having the .Net Framework present is not necessary to have this bug happen, but it may make it more frequent. Also, some scripts may have this bug more happen more than others since I saw it or some OS configurations more than others, but I saw it more with Sysreset on Win XP than I have with UPP on Win XP. Others may have a different experience with different hardware and software.

Please post your experiences so Khaled can see what is going on, folks.


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Quote:
was pretty upset by the way some folks ignored it on another forum and just acted like it was a non-issue,


this was becoze it wasnt sysreset related
that is why your post got a NON-issue statement

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I'm running Windows XP Pro w/ SP1, and I've tried mIRC 6.12...Which crashes like crazy when trying to run my fileserver! I'm not technical enough to figure this out on my own, so PLEASE Khaled or something figure this out!!! lol

Thanks everyone!

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