#2 install/uninstall bug: FMSLogo never shows window, pegs CPU

[Carl]

As best as can tell, FMSLogo 6 did not replace an earlier version completely or something. Result, FMSLogo would show running in process's tab on task manager, but not on application's tab -- made FMSLogo unusable. Plus, my students kept clicking on icon and eventually the whole machine quit.

Using the uninstall did not work, using the control panel uninstall did not work, neither would CCleaner fix what was becoming apparent to me, registry errors.

So I used Regedit and searched and deleted everything FMLlogo and then reinstalled, it works fine now.

[David Costanzo]

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That's great news, Carl. You figured the problem out! Thanks for sharing the root cause so that others can learn from your experience.

In 6.12.0, I fixed an installer bug where, if you didn't install to the default location (C:\Program Files\FMSLogo), future installers wouldn't be able to detect that FMSLogo was installed. The problem was that the old installer would say that the uninstaller was in C:\Program Files\FMSLogo, even when it wasn't. The new installers report the correct location, but they can't find the old installs because it's not where it says it is.

Do you think this could have been your problem? If so, I'm surprised that the outcome of this has such strange and catastrophic symptoms; I'd have thought the new version would have over-written any stale data from the previous version. This outcome never crossed my mind.

If you have always installed to the default location, something else must have put your machine into a bad state. Do you remember what the previous version of FMSLogo was? If so, please post-back and I'll try to reproduce it on my system.

By the way, can you explain what you mean by "eventually the whole machine quit"? You said you're using XP Pro, right? My experience is that XP is a scalable, robust operating system and it shouldn't quit because some user-mode apps are taking up CPU/RAM. (I expect that from 98 or ME, not XP). You should always be able to recover by ending the processes from task manager.

One last question: did you install FMSLogo as an administrator or as a limited user?

[Carl]

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I used admin to install on one computer and student user on the other, my students are considered "Super Users" and can install smaller programs like FMSLogo on the machines. When I say XP stopped working, I mean nothing could be loaded until each instance of FMSLogo was deleted from the process list, of course, the more I deleted the more the system memory cleared up.

I always install in the default location, too much work to use custom directories. The version of FMSLogo that was installed, was put in last January.

[David Costanzo]

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Thanks for your continued response, Carl. I was able to reproduce a problem with the same symptoms. I have tracked this down to a simple coding error that has nothing to do with the bug I mentioned the last time. I'll fix this bug in the next release, which will be a few weeks from now. I may release this version a little early, due to the severity of this defect and simplicity of the repro.

Repro:
1) Make the FMSLogo window as short as you can (so that it's just a titlebar).
2) Close FMSLogo
3) Start FMSLogo

Why this happens:
The logic that copies the currently selected line to the edit box goes into an infinite loop when the line is 0 bytes long. I think this happens because the text field is very narrow. Whatever the cause, this is pretty simple to protect against.

Work Around:
Run regedit and delete HKCU\Software\FMSLogo:Screen and HKLM\Software\FMSLogo:Screen.

History:
This regression was introduced in FMSLogo 6.11.0. I think it introduced when I fixed bug #1577908, which was to make the screen grow to fill the Commander's space when the Commander is undocked.

Something That Doesn't Sit Right:
I checked the registry on the machine where I saw this happen and there were no user settings, so the window size should have been the default size, which shouldn't trigger this bug. So there may be something else going on that I still don't understand.

[David Costanzo]

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I have checked in a few fixes for this. In addition to fixing the infinite loop, FMSLogo will now select reasonable values for window sizes when the settings that are stored in the registry would result in an unusable configuration. This fix will be available in FMSLogo 6.13.0. If you would like a private build to install in your lab before the official version is released, please email me.

Thanks again for taking the time to report the problem.