Pixinsight Not Responding after Wake From Sleep

[Salvatore Giambruno]

Pixinsight Version 01.08.05.1353 (x64) fails to resume (becomes unresponsive and must be force-closed) after computer resumes from sleep. 

The computer system is a relatively new Dell setup: AMD Ryzen 1700x with 12G DDR and Nvidia GTX 1070 running on Windows 10 Home 64-bit.  Other than this, the program appears to run flawlessly.  I also run PI on an Intel system and normally don't put it to sleep but tested PI sleep recovery on that machine and it appears to work just fine.

The only thing I suspect at this point is an external USB mechanical disk drive on the AMD system because it has hesitated in the past and I am using it as my data drive with PI.

While PI is unresponsive, Task Manager shows its process is consuming 7-7.5% (variable) of CPU resources and 408.4MB (unchanging) of Memory resources.  The PI process shows no disk or network activity.

[Juan Conejero]

This cannot be reproduced on any of our working and testing machines. Sounds like a hardware-specific issue on a particular machine, and hence out of our scope.

[Salvatore Giambruno]

Thanks, Juan.  I'm not sure if it this bug was working since the beginning.  I'll try rolling back Windows to the original system state and test under those conditions to rule out any system config changes that may have caused this after the original installation.

[Salvatore Giambruno]

Juan,

This may shed some light on the problem. 

I ran the PI installation program to repair (or remove and reinstall PI) and got this message:



I DO have access to the referenced folder.  I also ran the PI installation from the "C:" drive as admin.

This is what happened when I ran the PI Install program after a Windows resume from sleep.  So I rebooted the computer and ran it again and this time the install/repair ran without exception.

[Juan Conejero]

Hi,

Thanks for the detailed information. Again, this is a problem specific to your Windows installation. If Windows says that you don't have access to a directory where you are installing, then this is completely out of our control. These problems are not being generated, neither by our application nor by our installer packages. 

[Salvatore Giambruno]

Hi Juan,

I'm still having a hard time believing that a brand new computer system from Dell has got some out-of-spec funny business going on.  All my other programs on this system run just fine.  To that end, I've decided to investigate further.  I purchased this machine (with this 8-Core AMD processor) specifically to run PI - I refuse to walk away from this problem so readily - and I think it would be worth your and your team's time to sort out these problems as they arise - to better optimize your software for all contingencies and future hardware and software configurations.  And I'm happy to assist in whatever way I can.

Also, if the forum thread views are any indication, there is some interest in this topic - possibly from other users who are experiencing the same problem but do not have the time or capacity to address this issue personally.

That said, I think I've narrowed the problem down a little further.  I am able to circumvent the PI resume from sleep hang problem in one particular case.  If I MINIMIZE the PI application window before I put the computer to sleep, PI does NOT HANG when I resume the computer from sleep.  Therefore, the problem appears to be related to DWM.EXE.  Process Explorer (Sysinternals) confirms this.  The screen clip below shows a subset of the computer system processes after a resume from sleep.

Notice that the two processes that are in a NOT RESPONDING state are "Pixinsight.exe" and towards the top of the listing "dwm.exe".

Also note that PI is using 6.19% of CPU resources (apparently trying to interact with dwm.exe).

It appears PI is not playing nice with Microsoft's DWM (Desktop Window Manager).

[Geoff]

I have just had something similar.  After waking my laptop from sleep, PixInsight would not open--just nothing happening--no error messages.  However, a new instance of PixInsight did open without any problem.  I rebooted the computer and everything was back to normal.  I have an MSI laptop running W10
Geoff

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Salvatore,

I cannot reproduce this problem on any of our working and testing Windows machines, including two Dell laptops running Windows 10 and Windows 7 SP1. PixInsight 1.8.5 works perfectly after waking up from sleep.

I'm still having a hard time believing that a brand new computer system from Dell has got some out-of-spec funny business going on.

We have used and use many Dell machines running Windows and Linux. When we purchase a Dell machine, we always try to configure it without an operating system installed. In all cases we always format the disk drives and install a fresh copy of either Windows or Linux, without any trace of Dell software. All of our Dell computers work without any problems with PixInsight 1.8.5 on both Linux and Windows 10.

and I think it would be worth your and your team's time to sort out these problems as they arise - to better optimize your software for all contingencies and future hardware and software configurations.  And I'm happy to assist in whatever way I can.

As for the core application, the entire development platforms, and virtually all of the standard tools, me and my team consist of, well, me alone Thank you for the offer, but please bear in mind that I cannot test a complex application like PixInsight on a wide variety of machines, four operating systems, and an infinite set of different software and hardware configurations. I only work on standard machines with clean software installations. For a problem to be solvable, it must be reproducible on at least one of these machines.

In the list of processes you've posted, I see one that can be very problematic: mad home cinema control (madHcCtrl.exe). I'd try removing this utility and see what happens.

[Salvatore Giambruno]

Hi Juan,

Thank you for elaborating . . . and sorry for my persistence (and insistence) . . . I had no idea you were alone on this (I haven't been part of the PI community very long).  Now that you've laid out the facts about your resources and reasons, I am convinced that the problem is specific to my setup.  I will do as you suggest and remove MADVR - there really isn't much else on this PC at the moment - so it would be a good test for solution.

I do find it interesting however that Geoff (from a previous post in this thread) is experiencing a similar problem.

In closing I must say that overall, I think PI is an AMAZING piece of software!  Congratulations, Sir.

Sal

[Salvatore Giambruno]

Hi Juan,

I just wanted to follow up on this topic.  I am happy to report that the problem is no longer.  I restored the computer to "factory" condition and now everything works great.  You were correct that this was NOT a PI problem.  Thanks for all your help!

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Salvatore,

Thank you so much for posting this, I am glad to know this issue is now fixed.