Slideshow crashes

[kwell]

I'm running 4.4.3.1 on a PC (WinXP Pro). When I select images and then launch a slideshow, the program often hangs up on a black screen. Often, the first slideshow image will appear and hang (can't go to next image), and then other desktop items (like the taskbar on the bottom of the screen) will start to pop back up. I can usually hit ESC and eventually get back to the main program window.

This happened before upgrading to 4.4.3.1 (from 4.4.3).

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Kevin

[Kirk Baker]

Kevin,

I'm running 4.4.3.1 on a PC (WinXP Pro). When I select images and then launch a slideshow, the program often hangs up on a black screen. Often, the first slideshow image will appear and hang (can't go to next image), and then other desktop items (like the taskbar on the bottom of the screen) will start to pop back up. I can usually hit ESC and eventually get back to the main program window.

This happened before upgrading to 4.4.3.1 (from 4.4.3).

Any ideas?

And you have no problems previewing the same set of images?  What kind of video card do you have in your system?  Do you have the latest drivers for your video card?  Problems like this usually boil down to a driver issue.

-Kirk

[kwell]

Nope, no problems previewing the images.

I'll look into the video card, and also see if I get the same problems running it on the laptop's LCD rather than docked to an external screen.

I'll report back.

Thanks for the suggestion,

Kevin

[kwell]

The card is an ATI Mobility Radeon x300, with 64MB of memory.

I just updated to the latest driver and I still get the same problem. Interestingly, once I recover from the hang, the next time I start a slideshow it works OK.

Would it be worth completely uninstalling PM, and then installing the latest version?

Kevin

[Kirk Baker]

Kevin,

The card is an ATI Mobility Radeon x300, with 64MB of memory.

I just updated to the latest driver and I still get the same problem. Interestingly, once I recover from the hang, the next time I start a slideshow it works OK.

Would it be worth completely uninstalling PM, and then installing the latest version?

I don't think it would make any difference.

-Kirk

[kwell]

You're right: re-installing PM didn't help, nor did going back to a previous version (4.4).

When the slideshow is hanging, I see a new application called SDL_app. I also notice that the initial slideshow pop-up window (with settings for auto-advance, delay, looping...etc.) takes longer to come up, perhaps indicating something is amiss even before the slideshow itself kicks off.

Not sure if this gives you any other ideas of what could be going wrong, or what else I could try to troubleshoot.

Thanks

Kevin

[Kirk Baker]

Kevin,

You're right: re-installing PM didn't help, nor did going back to a previous version (4.4).

When the slideshow is hanging, I see a new application called SDL_app. I also notice that the initial slideshow pop-up window (with settings for auto-advance, delay, looping...etc.) takes longer to come up, perhaps indicating something is amiss even before the slideshow itself kicks off.

Not sure if this gives you any other ideas of what could be going wrong, or what else I could try to troubleshoot.

We do use SDL to provide a full screen slideshow (SDL is a cross-platform system for video game development/multimedia applications.)  It sounds like there is something about your system that SDL doesn't like...

-Kirk

[Whatlarks]

I have also just had the same problems with the SlideShow. I have an ATI Radeon 9700 pro graphics card running the latest ATI Catalyst drivers. The problem does seems to relate to the  ATI Catalyst Control Centre. My TaskInfo program shows 21 instances of this process ..

CMD |  = "C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\cli.exe" IComponent Refresh Caste=Graphics Adapter=\\.\DISPLAY1 Aspect=DisplaysColour

running at the same time. Each instance is using anywhere between 2-10% of the processor time. So altogether they simply bring the processor to its knees. Immediately after closing the SlideShow (PM still open) they start to disappear, first one at a time then suddenly all the remaining (~5-10) processes also close down and everything returns to normal.

I only have today left on my demo 21 day copy and I was just trying this out before purchasing. Any ideas?

Ian

[Kirk Baker]

Ian,

I have also just had the same problems with the SlideShow. I have an ATI Radeon 9700 pro graphics card running the latest ATI Catalyst drivers. The problem does seems to relate to the  ATI Catalyst Control Centre. My TaskInfo program shows 21 instances of this process ..

CMD |  = "C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies\ATI.ACE\cli.exe" IComponent Refresh Caste=Graphics Adapter=\\.\DISPLAY1 Aspect=DisplaysColour

running at the same time. Each instance is using anywhere between 2-10% of the processor time. So altogether they simply bring the processor to its knees. Immediately after closing the SlideShow (PM still open) they start to disappear, first one at a time then suddenly all the remaining (~5-10) processes also close down and everything returns to normal.

I only have today left on my demo 21 day copy and I was just trying this out before purchasing. Any ideas?

I have no idea why the driver would be doing that.  We only create one graphics context.  Can you uninstall and reinstall the ATI drivers minus the ATI Catalyst Control Centre?

-Kirk