EDS crashing when scrolling through HS wheel

[stevepel]

Reposting to the 3rd party app support forum.

I'm running HS with EDS (which in turn is launching LEDBlinky and HyperMarquee) and experiencing a problem where EDS will crash (and take LEDBlinky and HyperMarquee down with it) randomly when scrolling in the HS wheel.  It does respawn a few moments later and LEDBlinky recovers but HyperMarquee usually does not.  When I exit HS I see multiple remaining instances of EDS in the system tray, which clear as soon as I hover over them.

I haven't been able to nail down a single pattern to make it happen but it does seem more prevalent after running and exiting a few games under MAME.

I enabled logging in EDS and am seeing an event where the wheel item is set to "C\Program".  Here's an excerpt from the log (full log attached):

1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Event ID:7
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Wheel:MAME
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Wheel Item:rdaction
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | EventID:7
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Pipe message received Wheel: [MAME] item: [rdaction]
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Launching all applications. IPC Method:
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Launch Application:LEDBlinky
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | IPC Method: CLI PID:6632
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Parameters: "7" "MAME"
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | EventID: 7
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Remote Absolute Path :C:\LEDBlinky\LEDBlinky.exe
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Launching: LEDBlinky("7" "MAME")
Values: d369e7244ff249f6b08ba371974b942b, C:\LEDBlinky\LEDBlinky.exe, LEDBlinky, False, 4556, CLI, False, , [ledblinky], , False, , , , , ../../../LEDBlinky/LEDBlinky.exe, 
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Execute Remote Application:C:\LEDBlinky\LEDBlinky.exe Params:"7" "MAME"
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Launch Error Status:
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Launch Application:Hyper Marquee
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | IPC Method: Pipe PID:8476
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Parameters: false steverigmarquee "rdaction" "MAME"
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | EventID: 7
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Remote Absolute Path :C:\RocketLauncher\Hyper Marquee Setup\Hyper Marquee.exe
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Launching: Hyper Marquee(false steverigmarquee "rdaction" "MAME")
1/26/2021 9:46:18 PM | Launch Error Status:
1/26/2021 9:46:20 PM | Wheel:Main Menu
1/26/2021 9:46:20 PM | Wheel Item:C:\Program
1/26/2021 9:46:20 PM | EventID:0
1/26/2021 9:46:20 PM | Pipe message received Wheel: [Main Menu] item: [C:\Program]
1/26/2021 9:46:20 PM | EDS GUI Closing
1/26/2021 9:46:20 PM | Saving User Settings
1/26/2021 9:46:20 PM | ExportXMLSettings: Succeeded
 

The timestamps for the EDS logs don't matching system time but best I can tell this event follows HS sending event 4 (game exit).  It seems that EDS is getting bad data from HS, maybe due to timing issue or change in application focus.  Been searching through the forums and haven't come across anyone reporting the same issue so assume it's something with my setup.

After my original post I changed a setting in EDS to use relative instead of absolute paths and it seems to have helped avoid the crash, however now LEDBlinky and HyperMarquee are sometimes getting lost about the current selected game in HS until it's launched.

Looking for a better solution.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Event Log - EDS.txt

[schmucm]

I have the same thing happening to me. I'll be interested to see if there are any replies. To get HyperMarquee to relaunch, I set the IPC Method to Pipe (CLI). That way it tries to find the pipe first and if it doesn't, it will start it up again. 

 

I'm happy to try and help troubleshoot. If I find a solution, I'll certainly let you know. 

[Spawk]

Damn it I am going to be tackling this very soon! A friend of mine is giving me an old 4:3 monitor just so I can mess with this. No arcade controls here so I will just be using HM for now. Seems like one of those things that can be set up a number of different ways.

I can say that from a theoretical standpoint, it would be better to have all the programs load when the FE starts and just use pipe commands. Very fast, very light on resources. CLI is really only useful when you have to close and reopen a program. So I guess my question is, why do we need Hypermarquee to close at all here? Wouldn't it be better to just continually send it the next graphic to load?

Having multiple EDS in the tasktray sounds very wrong to me... surely has to do with closing down and reloading, are they actually running exe's or just "orphaned" icons (disappear when you hover your mouse over them)?

Looking forward to solving this with you guys!

[schmucm]

I attached my HS and EDS log as well to see if there are any similarities. My time is also off on the EDS log which makes it a challenge. I noticed mine is calling Event 4 (even though I never selected game) and yours doesn't seem to have that. 

What setting did you change to make your path relative instead of absolute? I can try that on mine and see if it also fixes it.

In my case, I can't set CLI to pipe because when EDS crashes, it doesn't bring the programs back up when it restarts. 

log (2).txt Event Log - EDS (2).txt

[stevepel]

Appreciate all of the responses.

@Spawk:  Agree I seem to have the best results with launching all programs with FE start and have that option selected in EDS.  I've been using pipe IPC for HM and CLI for LEDBlinky but am going to try switching HM to use Pipe (CLI) per schmucm's recommendation to see if that helps HM restart when EDS gets confused.  Also the remaining EDS icons in the system tray appear to be just orphaned as they disappear immediately when I hover over them and I don't see any EDS processes running in Task Manager after exiting HS.  I see in the EDS Read Me that it's an old bug the developer has been trying to fix for several releases and assume it's not related to my issue, but does give a sense for how many times EDS is restarting.

@schmucm:  The configuration for EDS to use relative vs. absolute paths is in global settings.  I attached some screen shots of my exact setup.  Thanks for attaching your log files.  Definitely some differences which I'm going to dig into, probably in the way we have our events configured in EDS.  In my case I want HM to change the displayed marquee when scrolling through systems and games.  Part of what's making it difficult is EDS overwrites instead of appends the log file on each restart, so I'm trying to catch any errors real time by Alt-Tabbing out of HS.  BTW I did some quick math and determined that the EDS log file timestamps are set to UTC, so you can correlate to the HS event log by applying your timezone offset (i.e. I'm in EST so had to subtract 5 hours).

Not sure if relevant but also wanted to specify that I'm running on Windows 7 (64 bit) with HS 1.5.0 (the 1.5.1 update seems to have broken HyperHQ under Win 7) and the latest versions of EDS, HM, and LEDBlinky.

Will keep playing around with this and post any additional findings.

[Spawk]

I run Win7 with 1.5.1 and yes I do notice that HQ will not always exit correctly. The UI disappears but if you check taskmanager the exe is still running. Not entirely broken though, just end the process and you can start HQ again. I guess I don't open HQ often enough to worry about it.

I also just watched Ninja2bceen's video from his awesome "Planet Geekdom" youtube channel:

He has HM set to CLI and the CBR (close before re-opening) checkmarked. I also notice he does not have "7" (system select) listed in the "Open Filters". Perhaps the "[event]" parameter handles this already?

[gigapig]

Here's my settings. I use EDS for marquee, HiToText and Hyperspeech. 

The only time I've had problems with EDS is with it crashing and that is fixed with me replacing the 'EDS_Settings.config' file which I have a back up of. 

[stevepel]

So playing around with this a bit more it does seem the crash is happening shortly after game exit.  Changing the IPC method for HM to Pipe (CLI) and increasing the Pipe Waiting Timeout from the 2 second default to 4 seconds seems to have helped.  I'm running an i5 system at 3.2 GHz and 6 GB RAM and didn't think it was particularly slow but there doesn't seem to be any adverse effect of increasing this timeout (marquees still change quickly when scrolling or selecting a game).  Will keep testing but after starting and exiting several games I haven't been able to reproduce the crash in a while.  Plus when I exit HS normally I'm only seeing one "orphaned" EDS instance in the system tray.

@gigapig:  Thanks for that tip about the EDS_Settings.config file.  I don't think mine has become corrupted but I have been changing settings quite a bit (which recreates the file) so maybe I've just been lucky.  In any case, I made a backup and will try your suggestion if I see the crash again.

Again - appreciate all of the help!

[schmucm]

@stevepel, I had to laugh when I read your trouble with the logs. I was doing the exact same thing. As soon as it crashed, Alt+Tab to file explore to copy the log file. You and I are after the same thing: marquee changes as someone scrolls through the systems and games. I tried changing my path to relative and extending the pipe time like you suggested. I was still able to crash it after some scrolling. I am also running Windows 7. My settings look very similar to yours except I pass the [event] as well. I also have Open Filter 8 but that shouldn't be too big of a difference.

@gigapig Thank you for sharing your setup. Do you know the significance of the 5th parameter? The ""? I thought I read HyperMarquee only takes in 5 parameters so am curious about passing 6th and what the "" signifies. Maybe it's one of those cases where it just works so don't touch it. I will also try replacing the EDS_configuration file. 

[stevepel]

After more testing it seems the settings I mentioned in my last post are as good as I can get it working.  EDS still crashes occasionally when scrolling in HS, but at least both LEDBlinky and HM quickly recover.  One minor annoyance after a crash is that HM will only display the default marquee until either a system or game is selected, but I can live with that.  I may play around a bit more with the pipe time out to see if it helps further reduce crashing.  Hopefully @Antos will investigate further.

[schmucm]

I am starting a fresh install on a slightly newer machine. I learned quite a few things since I first did this 5 years ago. I should have it complete in the next week or two. If HM no longer crashes on the new install, I'll let you know what I did differently and see if it helps.

[schmucm]

Hey @stevepel, took longer than I thought with having to return the original desktop. I got a slightly faster computer still running Windows 7. I did a clean install of everything and it no longer crashes. The system images work now as well. I realize a clean install is never easy but I did want to close the loop on this. 

Another setting I changed was I set all the programs (HS, LedBlinky, EDS, HM, etc.) to run as administrator.

If the issue returns for me, I'll let you know what I changed and that might lead you to a solution.