Foxit 2.3 -- Major Problems

[rochester12]

I need to look at some Amtrak timetables, click on the schedules button at www.amtrak.com for choice. There are 20 or so. i had no problems using 2.1 on these documents but 2.3 dies.

The symptoms vary.

I have been through at least 30 attempts now. I haven't been able to get the information I sought from the document before foxit dies.


I open an document. I go to the second or third page. In the process of resizing the document, moving screen down or screen up, go to a page, or setting preferences, foxit simply stops functioning. CPU utilization is low, certainly not high.

The symptoms are varied and not reproducible specifically.

Hot keys stop functioning. I display menus, click on an option, and the menu display doesn't go away.

When bring up the task manager, I don't see not responding.

Sometimes when it dies and I switch to another window, when I go back to foxit, the foxit window will not display.

Sometimes when I have to endtask it and start it again, hot keys do not work when it starts.

Sometimes it drawns only a portion of a page.

Sometimes when I move the scroll bars with the mouse the document doesn't move.

I get the same results on number of different timetables. Some simple text documents appeared OK.

Turning tabbing off and on doesn't seem to make a difference.

The problem may be document specific.

[christina]

I download some timetalbe files randomly, and they just work fine for me.

Give me your os info, I will report to make a thorough investigation on this issue.

[rochester12]

I emailed a copy of the document that consistently failed. It was the Illinois timetable dated August 8, 2007.

I made some more discoveries.

I made some images showing partially built screens when foxit died. I discovered that the images, made with print screen, were black and white when I retrieved them into XnView from the clipboard. When the program was working, the images were color.

The problem seems like it may have something to do with the display interface.

After I used foxit, I used Opera and it seemed like some screens were not being displayed right. It seemed like some portions were missing when I scrolled.

I also had some system crashes where multiple programs went down.

I sent in a foxit crashlog file. The log shows foxit crashing with some exceptions. I didn't recall seeing foxit crash with dialog boxes. I was surprised to find the crash log.

I noted a directory ms_gdi_plus with file gdiplus.dll in the foxit program directory. The file version was 5.1.3102. I noted that I had a newer one 6.0.3264 on my machine in the Windows Power Point Viewer program. I also noted a file fxdecod1.dll in the directory.

I decided to uninstall 2.3 and go back to 2.1.

The uninstall didn't work. It filled my temp directory with files of the form foxxxx.exe. I noted over 1700 of the files, each 88 KB. I recalled seeing this problem before and being unable to uninistall foxit.

I attempted manual uninstall. I deleted the program directory and the foxit software entries in my registry under hkey_current_user and hkey_local_machine.



I ran the 2.1 install program. It installed without problem.

The find command worked again.

I opened the Illinois timetable. I moved around it and it never crashed. The problem did not seem to exist with 2.1. The problem looks document specific and program version specific.

I also noted that the 2.1 install did not install the gdiplus.dll file or the fxdecod1.dll file.

Here I ran into a question. I could not determine if these files were new with 2.3 or were junk left around from old versions of foxit.


If the gdiplus.dll file is new, it looks like suspect number 1 here.

[Erik_Bryant]

Thanks for all this info. It will help the developers to figure out what is going on.

[christina]

gdiplus.dll file is generated after you install the gdi addon.

[rochester12]

Further developments.

I deleted my foxit software directory in the program files directory and installed 2.1. That got rid of the gdiplus.dll. Foxit worked without problem.

My OS is win 98 SE.

I installed 2.3 again. The gdiplus.dll was not there. I observed the same problems as before. So gdiplus.dll appears unrelated.

This time I tested by merely doing page up and page down. After 5 or six page ups and page downs the program froze. I got a message from some program saying I was out of memory.

I closed foxit and started over. This time I turned on my memory monitor, Norton System Doctor. I had plentyavailable, over 350 MB.

I opened foxit. I was using around 200 Meg of physical memory andno virtual memory used in the swap file. I did some page ups and pge downs. I noticed the memory increase 30 or 40 MB everytime I did a page up or down. My swap file remained at 0. The file I am looking at is only 177 KB.

I did some more page ups and downs. I noticed my memory usage continue to increase in large amounts.

The system froze. I looked at my memory usage and discovered that I was close to maxing out on my physical memory, maybe 470M used out of 512 MB on my system and I was now using memory in my swap file, 80 MB.

I did this some more and discovered that everything was consistent. I would load the document, page up and page down , watch my memory go up and up, and at some point maxed out, memory overflowed into the swap file, and foxit had died.

I also noticed that when I moved to other applications and then moved back to foxit the document on the foxit screen would not redraw.

When I closed foxit, all the memory returned. I had no problems closing foxit.

Then I decided to look at a 118 page text document, no graphics or colors. The same thing happened. I paged through the document. I watched the memory usage go up, max out, foxit died, and memory had overflowed into the swap file. The problem now does not now look document specific.

At this point I say to myself, unintall 2.3, install 2.1, and see what happens to memory usage.

I did that. I opened the 118 pge document. I paged down through the entire document, and the memory usage did not change at all.

I opened up the Illinois timetable again. I did page ups and page downs and the memory usage changed just a little.

It looks like under win 98 SE foxit is getting additional memory in multi megabyte chunks when I do a page down or page up and eventually running out of memory and dying.