V7.1.63 Buggy and Crashy Across all my Win 7 and Win 8.1 PCs

[JohnRichards]

Thanks Ashley, I think you have prompted us to backup all our Lightshow ".ini files" before and after we change fixtures and live pages, with referenced file names showing dates.
To support : Is there any way this could be achieved by having some sort of "audit trail" file for each .ini file?
John

[support]

No this is not possible. The best thing to do is, as you said, to make regular backups with date info, and also to save your backups in more than only one device.

Please note that we added this in the V8 ToDo list, for Live: at each "live.ini" save process, delete everything and re-write the necessary lines in pages/buttons ascending order This will not help for corrupted files, but this will help a lot to edit/modify them with a notepad software.

[JohnRichards]

For Support - Good idea to restructure file at save, but the file could be a severe risk if a crash occurs at that point. I would suggest a copy to a .bak file first.
John

[Pink LD]

Ascending order would make the process I am doing considerably easier. As it is now it is in the order by which Live, pages, and mods were built, meaning I have to search all over the place for all the buttons of a page.

[Pink LD]

So I am 33 Live pages in of debugging 119 Live pages in the Live.ini file. The number of buttons for each Live page is denoted correctly and I am pulling just that number of buttons over for each page from the corrupted file. What I see is many more buttons in each page from all over the place and as far as I can tell it seems they are just extra, perhaps leftovers from editing and/or reordering Live pages through the years. Or it is just corrupted from some save and it just piled on stuff everywhere with no rhyme or reason.

Any blank spots or odd behaving buttons seem to be conflicts with erroneous buttons trying to occupy the same lines/columns as the proper buttons. Hopefully I will have this all done and on into shop testing later this week before I have my next show on Saturday.

[support]

The most important is: [page] number = X, and [pageX] nb_buttons = Y

[page]
number = X
means [page(X+1)_buttonY] are ignored

[pageX]
nb_buttons = Y
means [pageX_button(Y+1)] are ignored

[Pink LD]

Well I have debugged my show, put everything in order, and reduced its size from 500+kb to 150kb. There was that much erroneous data!

The biggest thing I have observed in proofing and testing it all is how poorly the Live.ini file is managed. I know it was talked about making sure anything I do in Live from page deletion to adding or deleting Macros/Scenes is handled in an ascending order. It is frustrating to work with page 67 and anything I add ends up at the end of the list, in my case after page 118. With an actively programmed and modified show it is easy to see how quickly all the data gets jumbled.

Also I observed that when I deleted an unused page it generated unneeded useless data that would only in time recreate the problem that got me to where I was a few days ago.

But for now I know even more than I did before and realise that the previous time I sent my software in to be debugged I could have fixed it myself, but it is an advanced procedure and not for the average user.

For now I hope to regain confidence in the software not crashing 2-3 times in a 3.5 hour show. Thanks for all your help and I hope we can find some solutions to pro users with big shows in the future.

[Pink LD]

Support:
I am now back to programming my show and after each page I work with I go and tidy up the Live.ini file. Here is what I have observed:
1. If I add a button to a page it is added in the ini file at the very end, not inserted sequentially into the list where it should go.
2. If I delete a page the ini file goes a bit wonky but it leaves remnants behind. It was not my ini file being "corrupted" from a crash or power outage but rather all the leftover crap from reordering, deleting, and adding Live pages over time. Ultimately I had 4 times data left over and jumbled in; and it finally reached a breaking point.

I am still wondering if this is part and parcel to the size of show I have or if it is something else. If necessary I will make a small show and experiment with it to see if it does the same. And if you wish I can make a detailed analysis showing you what the ini file does in my show.