Zugg Software :: View topic - [2.17 Pro] Major? - Randomly missing settings and crash when trying to reload

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

I'm noticing with 2.17 that certain modules of mine keep losing settings. As far as I know, I don't have anywhere in my code where I delete the classes explicitly or even disable them. They just go missing, and I haven't yet figured out why this is. When I try to reload the missing pieces, I crash the client with the following exception:

Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:26 pm

Looks like it might be trying to clear a reference to some setting that no longer exists. Unfortunately I don't have a lot to go on here. I haven't seen any of my settings randomly disappear, and you do have a *very* complex set of settings (judging by the package that you sent me). Without some way to reproduce this, it's going to be nearly impossible for me to find the problem. You'll need to study which settings are disappearing and try to figure out what they have in common.

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

Definitely. I didn't know if the crash dumps would give any clues, really, but figured it couldn't hurt to post to see if anyone else has seen something similar and might help find a common element. If I figure anything more out, I'll definitely add it here.

Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 8:59 pm

The crash dump *did* help. It was trying to clear out a reference list (pointers to other settings). Part of this list cleanup routine checks to see if any COM objects were in the list or anything else that might need to have a reference count decremented. If an object was released somewhere else and the pointer to it now points to uninitialized memory, the crash you got above could occur when Delphi tried to determine if the pointer still pointed to a valid TObject descendant.

The new Delphi 2007 book from Marco Cantu that I just got a few days ago actually has a routine for checking to see if a random memory pointer actually points to a valid TObject descendant. I added that test to the list cleanup routine, so at least you shouldn't get that specific crash anymore.

Novice Joined: 01 Dec 2007 Posts: 49

I'm assuming that its a related problem. It's the only one I definitely know I added and didn't delete (as in, I'm not sure if any others are missing) and is simply not there today. I added a trigger in yesterday, that was working for over 4+ hours durring the time I was logged in.

I logged in this morning and noticed that the trigger wasn't firing. It no longer existed in my module. There's nothing in the module that disables or deletes triggers.

Now that I know it has occured, I'll keep a watch out for this reoccuring.