Version 9 Designer fails and will not run again

[Jerome҉]

I have had this happen to me four times so far, at least once before 9.0.1.

The Designer hangs while doing something. It may be related to some recent creation of templates, although once it was due to cancelling a deployment. At that point there is nothing you can do. Restarting the Designer does not work. It hangs at the splash screen.

I have tried a complete disk clean, including all the places (and there are many) the designer stores files. I have made a complete sweep of the reigistry as well, a complete uninstall and reinstall. The Designer will still never start.

This has happened on XP Pro SP2 and Windows 7 Pro 64, so it is not the OS.

Where can I look to find the cause?

[Nicklas]

Hi Jerome,

When you say a complete disk clean, did you include the settings in isolated storage?  If not, please have a go at deleting all the files there.

For example, on Vista / Windows 7 you should find settings files in

C:\Users\<username >\AppData\Local\IsolatedStorage\

Give that a go and see if it helps while we take a look for possible causes.  Please also note that this will clear your chosen settings (such as pad docking).  Nothing serious should be affected, though.

All the best,

Nicklas.

[Nicklas]

Hello again,

On second thoughts, If you haven't already deleted the files in isolated storage, could you send us a copy of them?  This might help us to recreate the problem in an environment we can debug.

All the best,

Nicklas.

[Jerome҉]

Yup, cleaned those too.

If (I suspect that is 'when') it happens again, I shall post those files.

[ChuckG]

Jerome,

I just read this thread.  I take it from your last post that you did something to get the designer to start again?  Your first post mentions that you cleaned a bunch of files and did a reinstall.  Was it working after that?

The last post implies that you had already cleaned the isolated storage and are working again.

It would be great if you could clear up the sequence of events.  We would love to solve this problem

As Nicklas mentioned, it would be great to have the isolated storage files, if that is what was causing the problem.

Best Regards,

Chuck

[Jerome҉]

Never, ever got it working again. Two physical machines will not work with the Designer, and two virtual machines. I only use virtual machines for version 9 now.

[Jerome҉ · Accepted solution]

It's the *&^%$( templates! I had noted before that it almost always followed doing something with templates, and I was right on that, at least.

I could have sworn I had deleted them the first time round, but I must have forgotton the 'my documents' folder every time. I had just dragged up an old VM that had the problem and I tried to setrip it clean to make the VM smaller for transfer. In the process I Cleaned out the my documents folder.

I tried the Designer just to avoid looking daft when it worked first time for support (which it would have ;-]) and it worked!

Not only that, but I now get the panel layout touted for 9.0.1, which is actially quite a good space save IMO (yet to see if I really like it).

A major releif as I can now stop using VMs and get some real performance out of my shiny new i7 quad processor. I might even learn to love the Expression Builder.....

[ChuckG]

Jerome,

It's great that you were able to isolate the issue.  Were you able to save the templates in question, so that we can see what is wrong with them?  We would love to resolve the issue with a permanent fix and help others to avoid the problems that you had.

Cheers,

ChuckG

[Jerome҉]

I have some from my host. When I deleted those it worked. Luckily I had the presence of mind not to shift-delete as I had on the VM.

I was going to attach them, but could not figure out how and then forgot. How do I do that?

Edit: posted here:

http://metastorm.processmapping.com.au/post?id=4719421&pid=40509390#post40509390

[pdenton]

In my quick and dirty testing it appears to be an issue with having multiple templates with the same name...

The combination that breaks is "PF DCAT.AdminFormTemplate" and "PF DCAT.FormTemplate".  So even though they are different template types the same names seems to be a problem.  I confirmed this by renaming "PF DCAT.FormTemplate" to "PF DCATB.FormTemplate". and now the Designer opens just fine...

I will be passing this on to development now...