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Geek Culture / what causes a Memory access violation error?

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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 16:24 Edited at: 15th Mar 2010 16:24
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I've just tried to use my copies of TreeMagic and PlantLife on my Vista machine and both fail immediately with the error message



This only started happening today. Both programs worked fine before.

I've tried re-booting and uninstalling/re-installing the software but still have the same problem.

This is the second weird thing today. Earlier DBPro refused to compile a programme giving the familiar UNDEFINED PARSER ERROR - and just wouldn't compile. Not only that but Windows wouldn't let me delete the old executable - it kept saying the file was in use by another application. This was despite the fact that no other applications were running (I had already closed DBPro). A re-boot solved that problem and DBPro now works fine again.

Any ideas what the PlantLife problem could be?

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David R
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 16:43 Edited at: 15th Mar 2010 16:45
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Could literally be caused by anything - corrupt file I/O, dodgy Win32 API calls (expecting say, a pointer to something, but the call has changed on the current version of the OS) or just working on some memory/pointer assumption that doesn't apply

File related stuff seems most likely considering PL will be loading lots of images and meshes. Maybe it doesn't check whether its 'core' files exist/opened correctly? (and it ends up reading garbage or some call returns 0/NULL for a pointer)

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Aaagreen
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 17:06
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I'm willing to bet Vista's your problem. In Windows 7, you can install the Windows XP "virtual machine" which basically lets you run Windows XP in a window (handy if you have 2 monitors, you can fullscreen it to monitor 2.

It literally is Windows XP. So any programs which don't work on Vista/7 you can just install to Windows XP running at the same time as 7, without farting around with dual booting or anything.

Jeku always gets drunk and tries to Moderate the ocean. Tirelessly slapping the waves as they roll in.
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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 17:17
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If Vista is the problem, why has the problem only occured today? Both applications have worked fine on the same machine and operating system up to now.
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Aaagreen
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 17:23
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If you've had it working before then I'm stumped, have you changed any hardware or admin rights lately?

Jeku always gets drunk and tries to Moderate the ocean. Tirelessly slapping the waves as they roll in.
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David R
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 17:39
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Ahh, just though of one more possibility: A virus.

If both these apps access resources inside of themselves, then something malicious tacked on the end (or elsewhere in the file) could well screw them up, so when they load the resources they get NULLs or garbage

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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 18:18
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Quote: "have you changed any hardware or admin rights lately?"


No hardware changes - but I have changed the network set-up and a side effect of that was that I now need a password when I log-on to either machine. Why would that affect a re-install - and only those two bits of software (as far as I know - will check a few others in a minute)?

Quote: "just though of one more possibility: A virus"


Possible - but seems unlikely. But you might be on the right track there. I think I played around with the Windows security settings at some point for some long-forgotten reason. I'll do some digging and report back.
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Benjamin
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 19:34
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I'm not sure if it'll help but try altering the DEP settings (it's under advanced system parameters->performance in system properties).
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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 21:01
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Thanks Benjamin. That did the trick.

I wonder why those two programs (plus Cartography Shop) need that now? They didn't before. In fact only four programs on my whole machine need that feature to be turned off. I wonder what's special about them?
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Benjamin
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 21:10
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Glad to hear it worked.

I'm not sure why those programs would need it disabled, although I have some idea for DBPro - I'm guessing when it allocates memory to store the application machine code, it doesn't give the memory pages the 'execute' right. Although, I've not had such problems with it. Still, it might be related somehow.
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David R
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 21:36
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Ahhh... DEP. I was close with the virus thing

Odd though, normally DEP gives you a special error with send/don't send. But meh

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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 15th Mar 2010 21:43 Edited at: 16th Mar 2010 00:37
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Quote: "I was close with the virus thing "


Yes - you made me remember that I had a similar problem some time back but I just couldn't recall what needed to be changed. Thankfully Benjamin stepped in and put me out of my misery. I would never have thought of looking up the Help files for "Data Execution Prevention" or whatever it was.

I wonder when this particular beast is going to bite again?
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Rudolpho
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Posted: 16th Mar 2010 01:23
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Quote: "Earlier DBPro refused to compile a programme giving the familiar UNDEFINED PARSER ERROR - and just wouldn't compile. Not only that but Windows wouldn't let me delete the old executable - it kept saying the file was in use by another application. This was despite the fact that no other applications were running (I had already closed DBPro)."

That's usually just the new IDE in all its glory; try compiling the same source in the old IDE and in ~80% of the cases it will give you a more relevant error message. It seems that they didn't / haven't gotten around to implement handling of all the error codes from the compiler yet.

As for the application being locked; know how annoying that is. For me, it is usually caused by a application freezing in the background (ie. in between when it starts to shut down the process and such time that it gets done with that). I suggest that you try to find and eliminate the process using the task manager before resorting to restarting the computer.

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Green Gandalf
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Posted: 16th Mar 2010 13:24
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Quote: "That's usually just the new IDE in all its glory; try compiling the same source in the old IDE and in ~80% of the cases it will give you a more relevant error message."


There was no error - the code usually compiles fine - it's just a quirk of the new IDE as you say. For some reason I get that error randomly on about 50% of compiles - but this case was different because Windows seemed to think the exe was "open" and in use in some way.

Quote: "I suggest that you try to find and eliminate the process using the task manager before resorting to restarting the computer.
"


How would I do that? I tried Task Manager itself but couldn't see anything obviously related to the rogue exe file. I restarted as a last resort.

This was a weird problem that I used to see a lot in the old Windows 3.1 days - strange to see it again now: plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose (sorry about the missing accents - no idea how to add them - must ask Benjamin our resident keyboard wizard ).
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Rudolpho
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Posted: 16th Mar 2010 23:27
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Ok, well, just threw it out there, if you couldn't find the process then I suppose there's nothing else to do

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