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Nobodo
Tomato Guru
126 Posts |
 Posted - Aug 11 2009 : 2:21:59 PM
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I sometimes use remote desktop to control a work (xp) machine and run visual studio (2005) on it, modifying c# and stored proc code, doing builds, etc.
For the first few months in 2009 I didn't have the need to do any VS changes through remote desktop, so I can't say this problem started with build 1715, but.....
In 2008 I had no problems with VS and VAX when remoted in, except the screen flicker while typing that others had mentioned. I always keep VAX up to the current version, so was using whatever version was current at any given moment. In about May 2009 I started needing to remotely control VS again, and I immediately started getting blue screens on the remote machine, and would have to call into the office to get somebody to reboot the machine. I only got these blue screens when working in Visual Studio, and it would always be either when typing in a code window or (strangely enough) dragging a window border to resize it. It would never take more than a few minutes of using VS to get the blue screen, and it would always be the same blue screen message, "PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA". It didn't seem to matter what machine I remoted in from, or even if it was a local machine on the same network or through a VPN connection.
I spent a lot of time troubleshooting this problem from what I found in internet research. Memory testing, hard drive testing, reinstalling Visual Studio, updating video drivers (even replacing the video card with a different type)... all sorts of things recommended to solve the problem, and none worked. Then one day I tried uninstalling VAX to see what impact that had, and the blue screens stopped. I reinstalled and the blue screens started again. I remembered seeing an entry in the 'registry settings' forum here about how to disable RDC optimizations, so I gave that a try. Hmmm, then I was able to run VAX in VS through RDC with no blue screen.
Anyway, no support request here, just some information in case others run into the same problem.
Thanks,
Mark. |
Edited by - Nobodo on Aug 11 2009 2:38:00 PM |
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accord
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
3287 Posts |
Posted - Aug 11 2009 : 7:57:56 PM
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Thank you very much for sharing this story with us and I'm glad you found a solution.
We added a checkbox to the Performance tab of the VA Options dialog to control Remote Desktop display optimization in 1723.
Also, to prevent a screen update problem, Remote Desktop display optimization is automatically disabled for Vista-to-Vista sessions with Aero enabled since 1721.
Anyway, what version of VA do you use? 1715?
What operation system do you use? (in case of using Vista/Win7: is aero enabled?)
It shouldn't crash like this with default settings. |
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Nobodo
Tomato Guru
126 Posts |
Posted - Aug 12 2009 : 10:43:55 AM
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As stated above, at any given time I am using the most current version of VAX. I look at the forums probably twice a week, and check the 'announcements' area to see if there's a new posting, and if there's an update I install it before starting VS. I also keep 'Automatically check for new version' and 'Also check for new beta version' checked, but for some reason I notice that it finds no updates but then when I come here to the forum I see there's been an update, so I download it. Hmmmmmmmm.
I noticed on the latest version or two a checkbox for the RDC settings. I recommend that you update the 'registry settings' forum entry to indicate that manually changing the registry is no longer necessary (honestly I look there and wonder how many other things no longer need to be manual registry changes?).
I normally RDC into this particular XP machine from a Vista desktop or laptop. I have also tried from another XP machine, same problem. This past weekend I wiped out the Vista desktop and laptop and replaced them with Windows 7. I haven't tested this issue with Win 7 to XP yet, but curiosity will get the better of me and I'll give it a try soon :)
Thanks,
Mark.
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Edited by - Nobodo on Aug 12 2009 10:48:16 AM |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Aug 12 2009 : 10:46:45 AM
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This is a very serious problem. From forum thread:
http://forum.wholetomato.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=8684
user tandr was able to turn ON
VA Options -> Performance -> Optimize screen updates during Remote Desktop sessions
without getting any crashes after they uninstalled Microsoft IntelliMouse drivers. Do you know if you are using Microsoft IntelliMouse drivers for your mouse on the machine you are connecting to remotely? |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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Nobodo
Tomato Guru
126 Posts |
Posted - Aug 12 2009 : 11:07:44 AM
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Thanks, I hadn't seen that posting from tandr, which is unusual because I typically scan this forum to see new messages and responses fairly frequently.
The Microsoft mouse Intellipoint driver was one of the things I found on some discussion forums as a possible cause. I have a MS wireless laser mouse 5000 on the xp machine. I tried upgrading to the latest drivers for it, as the forums suggested older drivers were the culprit. No help. I then tried removing the intellipoint drivers altogether, no help. I then stuck a generic mouse in the laser mouse's place (no intellipoint drivers), no help.
I didn't give a full list of places where the blue screen would occur.
Most occurrences - when typing in the edit window.
Most frequently - when resizing a window.
Most randomly - when scrolling a dropdown or list
Note on the above -- most time is spent typing in the edit window, so even though that is where the most blue screens happened it's not the most frequent place by time spent there.
Might add to the case? I use dual monitors on all machines, and have the RDC connection /SPAN so it will use both monitors remotely also. The monitors at home are a higher resolution than the ones at work, so when I pull up VS generally the first thing I do is resize windows, and bang there goes the blue screen. I have not tested this without spanning monitors to see if the problem disappears, that's a valid test. I use UltraMon, but one of the first things I did as a test when this started was uninstall it (on both machines) but that had no effect.
Another note: I use a modified version of Dvorak keyboard layout (Dvorak with I/U flipped, backspace on Caps Lock, etc.), not Qwerty. Probably not relevant but does mean a non-standard keyboard mapping that throws some software for a loop.
Thanks,
Mark.
Note - this is very repeatable, and always happens within a few minutes of use of VS. I could probably do some limited testing some weekend when I didn't really NEED to remote in. |
Edited by - Nobodo on Aug 12 2009 11:15:09 AM |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Aug 13 2009 : 1:49:09 PM
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The FAQ's, even when an option has been added to the options dialog the keys in the registry still work correctly. You are right though, the FAQ's should be updated. I am trying to avoid them being to cluttered with "if you are using versions X to Y" statements though 
Clearly this is very serious problem. Are you aware you can tell windows to reboot automatically on a blue screen?
Windows Control Panel -> System -> Advanced Tab -> Startup and Recovery Settings -> System failure settings -> Automatically restart
This is not a good fix, but it should help a little bit, since hopefully you will be able to remote connect again after the machine has finished rebooting.
In terms of testing this, would you be able to remove desktop from a second machine at work? I am trying to think of an approach with the least problems and inconvenience for you.
I will ask our developers and see what they can recommend in terms of trying to debug this. For now, as you already realise, turning off remote desktop optimisation is the best thing to do. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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Nobodo
Tomato Guru
126 Posts |
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 2:24:44 PM
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To test this I will probably set the machine to reboot when a failure happens, as you recommend, and test from home. I don't normally set machines to reboot instead of going into the blue screen since it creates a nasty loop if the blue screen happens during boot or login (this one doesn't, of course)...
I don't normally have time to test this in the office. The two home machines I normally access this machine from are now Windows 7 (they were both previously Vista). I will test this next weekend to see if the same problem happens when the remote is Win 7, but I don't expect that to eliminate the problem. After I confirm the problem still remains, I'll report back here and can do any kind of testing you recommend. In the meantime I just have the RDC optimizations turned off in VAX and it's ok.
Thanks,
Mark.
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 4:16:37 PM
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I have discussed this with our developers. Unfortunately, as far as we can tell, the problem is happening at a low level, "below" the IDE and VA, so there is nothing we would be able to catch internally to try and fix the problem. The machine has crashed before we know anything is going wrong.
It seems to be triggered by a problem in one or more of the drivers you have installed on the remote / work machine, IntelliSense mouse drivers for most people. So the "fix" is to find and remove or update the problem driver. This is not much of a fix though.
Hopefully simply turning off the optimisation is a workable solution for you. I wish I had better news for you. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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pivanof
Junior Member
20 Posts |
Posted - Jun 29 2010 : 07:03:01 AM
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Can I revive this topic? I have somewhat similar issue. But I don't have blue screen, my Visual Studio crash. If I leave VS running on a desktop and then use remote desktop to login there then VS crashes instantly after login. If I run VS from remote desktop, leave it running and then come to desktop itself instantly after login VS crashes. Each crash produce the following report in the Event Log:
Faulting application name: devenv.exe, version: 9.0.30729.1, time stamp: 0x488f2b50
Faulting module name: va_x.dll, version: 10.6.1823.0, time stamp: 0x4be31eb2
Exception code: 0xc0000417
Fault offset: 0x002c1e6e
Faulting process id: 0xe4c
Faulting application start time: 0x01cb16d2aca05bac
Faulting application path: ...\\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\\Common7\\IDE\\devenv.exe
Faulting module path: ...\\visual assist x\\va_x.dll
Report Id: a3398de0-8364-11df-aca6-002564390e84
I've tried to turn off "Optimize screen updates during Remote Desktop sessions" but then I have just black filling instead of editor's contents. Is it something that's possible to fix?
If that matters I have Windows 7 x64 on the desktop and 32-but Windows 7 on the PC where I use remote desktop from. |
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Nobodo
Tomato Guru
126 Posts |
Posted - Jun 29 2010 : 2:46:06 PM
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I see that I should have updated this thread sometime back but forgot to.
The blue screen issue I used to have stopped when I upgraded the client machines to Win 7; no change was made to the office machine I was remoting into. Since then I have been able to turn the VAX remote desktop optimization back on.
Pivanof, this info doesn't help in your case since the issue you are having is something different. Above in this thread I said I would report back with results, so your posting made me reread the thread and reminded me to report back.
Thanks,
Mark.
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Jun 29 2010 : 4:42:31 PM
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pivanof can you post a screen shot of what you are seeing with "Optimize screen updates during Remote Desktop sessions" turned off please?
Black filling sounds totally wrong. Does turning off VA's Enhanced Syntax Coloring while using remote desktop make any difference? |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
Edited by - feline on Jun 29 2010 4:43:10 PM |
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pivanof
Junior Member
20 Posts |
Posted - Jun 30 2010 : 06:28:49 AM
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Well, I think I can confirm now that "Optimize screen updates during Remote Desktop sessions" has some problems, probably specific to Windows 7 x64.
When VS crashed last time I was in remote desktop. So I've tried to turn this optimization off when I have finished. When I came back onsite VS didn't crash. (Then I had to reboot several times but I doubt it's related.) Now when I came back into remote desktop VS didn't crash again and editor window looked normal (I didn't touch optimization option, so it was turned off) but a little flickery. Then I turned optimization back on - editor not flickery now. Then I turned optimization off and I see black window again.
Turning Enhanced Syntax Coloring off didn't help. But when I restarted VS with optimization turned off editor looked normal again. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Jul 01 2010 : 09:43:14 AM
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Thank you for the screen shot, this shows the problem very clearly. So far I have been unable to reproduce this problem, but I have asked internally to see if anyone else can:
case=46635 |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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pivanof
Junior Member
20 Posts |
Posted - Jul 02 2010 : 11:05:46 AM
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| Probably I was too fast to blame optimization option in crashes. Because I've already got a crash when option was turned off and several times there were no crashes when option was turned on. I'll keep looking if there's some pattern there. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 1:27:53 PM
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| It is possible something else is helping to trigger these crashes. A few users who have been seeing crashes under Remote Desktop have reported that the crashes went away after they uninstalled Microsoft IntelliMouse drivers on the machine they were connecting to. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 2:29:01 PM
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I have managed to reproduce the problem of the black editor under remote desktop:
case=46635
For me closing and reloading the IDE fixes this. This problem is only showing up when turning
VA Options -> Performance -> Optimize screen updates during Remote Desktop sessions
off. Hopefully you won't need to toggle this setting to often.
case=46635
No signs of any IDE crashes during my testing though, so still not sure what to make of that rather serious problem. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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pivanof
Junior Member
20 Posts |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 2:39:27 PM
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| My last observations suggest that IDE crashes when it had focus while I was closing Remote Desktop window and then came onsite. BTW, probably it has something to do with multi-monitor setup of my office PC and some differences in desktop resolutions between Remote Desktop and physical monitors. Because it looks like crash happens when IDE redraws its area after OS finished re-arranging of windows over "new" desktop... |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Jul 07 2010 : 10:01:18 AM
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How many monitors do you have on each machine, and how are they arranged?
Can you please post a couple of screen shots, showing the IDE layout on the remote desktop, when logged in directly and when logged in via remote desktop. I can then try to set up a similar test here, and see if I can reproduce this crash. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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pivanof
Junior Member
20 Posts |
Posted - Jul 07 2010 : 10:48:02 AM
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The layout of IDE you can see on the previous screenshot. There is VA Outline on the left, Solution Explorer on the right, bottom panels are all visible to you. In office I have 2 monitors 1280x1024 on both, left monitor is primary and taskbar is on the right of the left monitor, width of the taskbar is about 180 pixels. I keep VS usually full screen on the right monitor (not maximized, but size is made exactly equal to size of the monitor). At home I have 1 monitor. Can't say it's resolution now for sure but I believe it's 1280x1024 too. I run Remote Desktop in full screen mode (true full screen, without taskbar visible and without window borders) and VS uses all available space there, i.e. all screen except taskbar on the right. I didn't see crashes switching from desktop to Remote Desktop lately. But crashes while switching from Remote Desktop to desktop when VS is in focus seem pretty consistent. And if that matters I close RD not via Start menu but via cross button in RD's top panel.
Tell me what else I've forgot to describe. Maybe VA's settings matter, but I don't remember changing much from defaults. I guess I just apply color to everything...
And BTW if problem is in some drivers then I won't be able to fix it as I don't have administrative privileges on the PC and I doubt that admins will agree to make some experiments with that to see if they are culprit. |
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pivanof
Junior Member
20 Posts |
Posted - Jul 07 2010 : 10:26:20 PM
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| I was wrong. The screen resolution of home PC is 1400x1050. Pretty strange value for me but it was installed during installation of Windows 7. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Jul 12 2010 : 4:24:27 PM
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I have run some more tests here, with different resolutions on the two machines, and two monitors on the remote system, and still no sign of any IDE crash.
Since you have seen at least one crash with the "Optimize screen updates" flag turned off this seems to be a different problem than the original blue screen problem.
How often do you see this crash? Are you able to reproduce it with any form of reliability with the Optimize option turned off?
This utility might allow you to capture a mini dump of the IDE crash:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/dd996900.aspx
From the event log it sounds like this flag will help:
-e Write a dump when the process encounters an unhandled exception.
so the command line will be:
procdump.exe -e devenv.exe vs2008_remote_crash.dmp |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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pivanof
Junior Member
20 Posts |
Posted - Jul 15 2010 : 1:51:55 PM
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I was able to generate 2 dumps. One is with Optimize option turned on. Another one should be with it turned off (although I'm not sure because after restarting I saw that it's turned on - maybe it just wasn't saved). First one appeared on switching from Remote Desktop to normal mode, second another way round. Dumps are 4.5 Mb in archived size, if you think they will be useful for you I can put it somewhere. And btw -e option didn't work in procdump because no exception was thrown, -t option worked though.
Also I think I've refined steps necessary for me to reproduce crash: you need to have some good amount of windows opened to slow down re-layouting at switches between Remote Desktop and normal work. Maybe also the size of the project in VS and number of symbols in it play some role. Also it looks like crash doesn't happen when you just launched VS - you have to work in it for some time. Then you leave VS as active window and after switching mode of operation you need to move mouse over VS window while it tries to re-layout and to redraw itself.
And if it matters we downgraded VA to version 10.5.1727.0 as it appeared that our company didn't renew support since then. |
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feline
Whole Tomato Software
United Kingdom
18939 Posts |
Posted - Jul 15 2010 : 2:02:59 PM
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Can you please email me via the form:
http://www.wholetomato.com/support/contact.asp
including this thread ID or URL in the description, so we can match it up. I will then request a trial license key so you can try and reproduce this crash with VA 1827, since it will be a lot easier to work with a dump file from the current version of VA. |
zen is the art of being at one with the two'ness |
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Blue screen in remote desktop
