Error writing swap file

[georg.viehoever]

Hello,

I am using PI version 01.04.01.0460 eng (x86) on a Vista system with 2 disks. So I configured it to use both disks for swap files, This has worked well for a couple of sessions, but now I see this:

- I try to apply a curves transform to one of my images.
- The console says "Writing swap files... <failed>"
- A dialog box pops up saying "Insufficient disk space to write swap file: D:/tmp/~PI32~P2BB3LR8BJKD~sonne_800_1000_6_.swp, 30505848 bytes must be written; 0 bytes are available on the target device."
- Checking D: I see that I have 334 GBytes free
- I also have no problem to write to  D:/tmp/ using other programs.
- Restarting PI did not help.

Kind regards,
Georg

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Georg,

This is a known issue with PixInsight 1.4 for Windows. We still haven't managed to identify where exactly this problem comes from, but it happens mostly with removable media and some SCSI and SAS disks. Apparently, it is caused by a weird behavior of some Windows API routines when called from multithreaded code. The Mac OS X and Linux versions don't have this problem at all.

So far the best workaround seems to be using the root directory of each problematic drive. For example, in your case you should try with D:\ instead of D:\tmp. This should work in your case.

Other users have also fixed this problem by uninstalling/reinstalling PixInsight.

Please let me know how it goes.

[georg.viehoever]

Wow, this was a quick answer!

- I initially resolved the problem by removing D:/tmp from the list of swap file directories.
- I just tried to add D:/tmp: the problem reappeared
- BTW, rebooting Vista did not help to resolve it.
- adding D:/ works, and I can see the swap files PI allocates. Thanks for the workaround.

Thanks for this beautiful software!

Georg

[Juan Conejero]

Thank you Georg, I'm happy to know it works

I hope to be able to fix this problem in the next version.

Cheers,

Juan