BSOD in Vista

[wshimmin]

Just tried Cumulus (V1.7.13) for the first time in Vista Business and I get a BSOD when exiting the application. A shame as it looks really good otherwise

[steve]

I run Vista on the machine I use to develop Cumulus, and I know others use it successfully with Vista, so that's a bit strange. BSODs are usually down to problems with hardware or drivers. Maybe it's the serial driver?

Are you running Cumulus as administrator? If you've installed to the default location, Vista will probably require this (not that you would expect a BSOD either way). What is the Stop error that you're getting? And what type of weather station do you have?

I know that Cumulus can sometimes throw an exception when closing down. I've tried to get to the bottom of this, and put some changes in recently, but I've still seen it happen. Maybe this exception is what is somehow resulting in a BSOD on your system.

Steve

[wshimmin]

Steve

Thanks. It could be the serial driver - I use a USB to serial adaptor although it's never caused a problem with Virtual Weather Station. In fact this is the first time I've had a BSOD on this box and it happens consistently on closing Cumulus. I removed the app and did a system restore so can't tell you what the Stop error was but I'll re-install and let you know.

My weather station is an Oregon WMR928.

[steve]

Yes, my money would be on the driver for the serial/USB adapter. Sadly, some people do seem to have problems using Cumulus with one of those, while others use one without any problems. I had one report of Cumulus working OK for a few minutes and then the data stopped updating. Cumulus must be driving the serial interface in a slightly different way to other software.

I've looked at my code and I can't see what it is that I'm doing that might be causing a problem. I'll have a look specifically at the shutdown code to see if I can see anything. When you close it, do you get the 'are you sure you want to exit' dialog, then you click 'yes', and then you immediately get the BSOD?

Steve

[steve]

I've noticed that I don't explicitly close the serial port on exit. I've created a new version which does close the serial port, it's here:

http://www.nybbles.co.uk/downloads/cumulus.exe

It's not a setup file, it's just the executable, so just copy it over the one that's installed already. Please could you try it and see if it helps? The only other thing I can think of at the moment is to check whether you have the latest driver for your serial/usb adapter.

Steve

[wshimmin]

Steve

Thanks. I'll give it a go this evening.

[wshimmin]

Steve:
The BSOD is no more - thanks. One more thing though: CPU usage is very high, averaging 80% on a 2Ghz Core 2 Duo. What's using that amount of processor time?

[steve]

That's Cumulus using 80%? It uses 2% on my Vista system (with an AMD processor). I can't think why it would be different. Unless it's something to do with the way your usb/serial driver works. I'll see if I can produce a test version with some profiling turned on.

Steve

[wshimmin]

Yes, its cumulus.exe running at 75-80% in the Processes list. My usual app - Virtual Weather Station - is OK, barely showing any processor activity at all so I guess the USB/serial driver itself is not the problem. Very odd! I'll try it in an XP virtual machine to see what happens.

[wshimmin]

OK - I've tried it in an XP virtual machine and there's minimal processor load. Of course, there's no physical serial port so not sure if this makes a difference.

[steve]

When you're running in the VM, is that virtualising the serial port created by your USB/serial driver, or is the USB/serial driver running in the VM itself, if you see what I mean?

What VM software are you using?

Meanwhile, I'm struggling to find a free profiler that will give me any useful info.

What bits of Cumulus are you using at the moment? Any web site uploading, and/or the real time stuff?

Steve

[wshimmin]

Steve

I'm using MS Virtual PC 2007 which can't talk to USB ports so I set it to talk to a (non-existant) serial port. I just tried Cumulus with a fresh install - no web site uploading, etc. I do have a Core 2 Duo laptop with a real serial port and I'll give that a try this evening.

[steve]

I should have a profiling version ready soon, which might help to throw some light on the problem.

Steve

[wshimmin]

Steve
As you suspected, it seems to have been the USB/serial driver. I tried Cumulas on an XP Core2 Duo laptop and it was fine. When I restarted the Vista PC it decided there was no driver for the USB/serial adaptor (why?) and went off looking for one. After that, Cumulus ran without any problems. Many thanks for your time. I'm looking forward now to getting my weather station online.