Pmv 3.17 Blocks On Foc If Last Drive Used Is Unavailable, And sometimes even when it is! Options

[asavage]

I've noticed this in other versions, but it was really apparent today when I installed v3.71

The last time I used PMV, I was using a networked drive for opening files.

When I installed v3.71 today, the network drive was unavailable. Upon <Ctrl+O>, PMV nearly locks the system. I have three installations, and I thought it was PMV locking up, but it would seem to work right up until I opened the FOC.

The first box opened the FOC, and populated it with placeholder icon, but locked up when drawing the thumbnails. The other two wouldn't even draw the FOC; they just became zombied when <Ctrl+O> and the last drive was a non-available network drive. They would not immediately kill via the Tasklist, but given enough time, they did eventually die.

When I rebooted the server (the network resource for image files), and restarted each PMV, they seem to work OK.

I have noticed bad behaviour in the past WRT the FOC and networked drives, sometimes to the point of having to reboot the client box, and at one time this was bad enough that I just didn't use PMV on networked drives, but the last two years this has been less of a problem, though it would still become unresponsive when <Ctrl-O> on a network drive and I'd have to kill & restart it. In those cases, it would always lock up during populating the icons in the right pane; either it wouldn't draw all the placeholders, or it wouldn't finish creating the thumbnails.

I've put off posting about this bug for years, because it seemed like too much work to track down for what I perceived to be an OS/2 networking-related issue, but I have had it happen at least once on a WinXP SP3 box, just last week. I've no idea about how to approach fixing it, but I thought it would be a good idea to document that at least one user is having a problem WRT the FOC and networked drives.

I do 90% of my work with images on an OS/2 server. Lately, I've been doing a lot more than previously, so the frequency of problems is higher.

[later]
FOC locks up with 3/4 of the FOC saying "can't create thumbnail" and two icons saying "creating thumbnail". CPU at 100%, mouse moves but is showing an OS/2 clock cursor. I was able to grab a camera and take a picture, as it turns out the box had to be rebooted -- the screen remained unchanged for 30 minutes.

[later]
I just updated my WinXP box to v3.71, and saw some odd FOC behaviour too, noted in the second picture below: the left pane does not fully populate all of the mapped drives until about 45 seconds have elapsed.

Here's a couple of pics. If the links don't work, my broadband is down again.
Screenshot via camera: OS/2: box locked up at FOC

Screenshot via camera: WinXP: PMV locked for 45 seconds.

I'm off to backlevel to v3.70 (on the OS/2 boxes at least).

Sidebar for the Win version:
While I'm thinking of it: Win version: when I have a whole lot of files on a network drive and the FOC has generated thumbnails, and I dump a new file in that remote directory via another app, then bring up the FOC and refresh (F5), on the Win box there is no indication that the refresh is occurring.

For example, using PhotoShop, I just put those two pics above in a directory I was working on with PMV. I wanted to bring the PSD file in PMV. I opened the FOC and saw all the existing thumbnails. I pressed <F5>. The new PSD file has a filename which sorts it to the end. It took around ten seconds before the new placeholder icon (and eventually the thumbnail) appeared. During that 10 seconds, there is not user feedback that the refresh is occurring. I, as a long-time user of PMV, am used to this, but every so often I forget to "wait for it", and during this interval I'm thinking that something has gone wrong.

As an enhancement, some kind of visual indication that a refresh is in progress would be a good idea.

[Peter]

I'm off to backlevel to v3.70 (on the OS/2 boxes at least).

Al,

Are you saying that 3.70 works?

That would seem strange, as v3.71 only has a two bugfixes that are not related to the File Open dialog at all.

"New" problems that occur after installing PMView are usually related to OS2.INI corruption (possibly made worse after WarpIN made changes to OS2.INI during installation). Are you regularly cleaning your INI files with IniMaint or a similar tool?

Also, check your setting of the "Use Workplace Shell APIs for copy/move/delete" in PMView's options notebook and read the on-line help for this setting. (This is very important if you don't do regular cleaning of your OS2.INI. Using the WPS API leaves file handles dangling).