Crashing?

[BrianB]

I am in the process of evaluating a trial version of Enterprise Architect and wanted to see if anyone else experiences any crashing. I like the software, but am nervous about the stability. I also don't have the time to try and debug the crash to see what other scenarios cause it, etc.

In particular, the crash I'm experiencing seems to be connected with the "Select XXX Source File(s) to Import" file browser dialog. This is the dialog that comes up when you want to import from source (ex. I right click somewhere in a new/blank class model diagram, go to "Import from source file(s)" --> "C++", though the language doesn't matter. Now all I have to do is navigate up and down a few folders and Enterprise Architect crashes. The crash does not happen in the same folder or after a specific number of folder entries/exits. I have tried reproducing the crash in a few other file browser dialogs within Enterprise Architect, but have only seen it within this particular dialog.

Has anyone seen crashing elsewhere?  This could be a deal breaker.

Using Enterprise Architect 7.5.850. Thanks.

[Makulik]

Hi Brian,

There was another post mentioning that this crash particularly occurs when running EA under Window7. Is this your OS environment?

EA 7.5 850 runs pretty stable for other Windows versions. The Windows7 bug already got notion by Sparx and is going to be fixed AFAIK.
Any Sparxian here to confirm this?

WBR
Günther

[BrianB]

I am running Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3.

Intel Core 2 Quad CPU 2.66 GHz, 3.25 GB of RAM

[Eve]

From the way I read your post, I'm seeing that you're getting a crash while using the file select dialog.

Well, the good news is that I have seen that behavior before.  The bad news is that when I saw it, it was the windows file dialog itself that was crashing, and that it was reproducible for any application that uses that dialog.  (It was interesting having a consistent case to crash notepad.)

I very rarely see EA crashing, and I see nearly all bug reports.  So in general I would expect that you would find EA very stable.

[BrianB]

I figured out the issue. You are correct, this issue is specific to the Windows file dialog, and has nothing to do with Enterprise Architect.

I changed my Windows login password yesterday and did not enter this new password into our source control system (Surround). Our source control system integrates into our windows explorer directories (i.e. you can check out files from windows explorer/my computer file browser). When I opened the source directories in EA, EA would crash. I didn't figure the real problem out until I was browsing windows explorer outside of EA and watched all of my windows and icons vanish (explorer.exe had crashed). The reason this was so hard for me to track down is because not many of my folders on the Windows side are tied to source control (most are in Linux... so it was hard to reproduce in Windows outside of my EA eval testing). So long story short, it is a bug with Surround.

Thank you for helping me out... and I'm glad to know that the software is indeed stable!

[fwoolz]

Brian,

I've been using EA since the 3.X days (about 7-8 years?) and have found it to be considerably more stable than the operating system it runs on (as you've just discovered)!

Fred Woolsey

[Geert Bellekens]

I'm (ab)using EA pretty intensive the last few years and I can confirm that overall it is pretty stable.
I do run into a crash once in a while, but not to the extend that it becomes a problem. Rebooting the machine after a crash usually helps.
I think I have an average of 1 crash every two months.

Geert