Mega Crashing

[Orbity]

We've recently upgraded all of our production servers to 10g and upgraded our PL/SQL Developer version to 7.0.0.1050. We are still using the version 9 client (unchanged).

I've been using this product for the past couple years and I've always liked it quite a bit. I'm starting to dislike it however. Since upgrading my version I've only had one day where it didn't crash. A simple crash of the application would be annoying but I could deal with it a whole lot easier than what it is doing now. It is taking my entire system down. I lost over 100 lines of VB.NET code the other day when I switched from Visual Studio to PL/SQL Developer to answer a question for someone and it propmptly took my system down. The computer is still running but the monitor gets turned off like it does when the computer is shut down, the mouse won't work, the keyboard doesn't work, nothing. The only thing we can do is turn the computer off and then back on. Last week it took me a couple hours to get everything back up and running again since something in my profile was messed up in the process. Nothing is written to any of my event logs by PL/SQL Developer or by any of the Windows System Components.

Has anyone had a similar experience? It seems completely random since the first two times this happened I was clicking on the window toolbar, the second happened when I was selecting a table and today it happened again after right clicking a table and selecting "Query Data".

For now I've had to resort to downloading Toad just because I'm afraid to use PL/SQL Developer because it may take my system down again.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

John

 

[BWendling]

As there is no other (probably more competent) answer, my suggestion is to try the "Disable XP-Style" option under Tools-Preferences-Appearance.

 

[Orbity]

Thanks for the suggestion. I did give it a try and the problem happened again.

I think it is a memory issue of some sort as I generally have many different sql/program/test windows open at any given time.

I changed the xp style setting and restarted the application. I use the windows classic theme anyway if that matters. Then I went through and opened a bunch of windows (about 15) then closed them. After closing the third one it happened again. I can't seem to reproduce the problem consistently though :-\

 

[Marco Kalter]

We'll have a 7.0.1 version available later this week (probably tomorrow). It fixes a resource issue, which may be the cause of this problem.

 

[Orbity]

No luck. I've installed the latest patch and it will still take the entire system down periodically.

I can't seem to consistently force the issue to occur so, unfortunately, it's nearly impossible for me to give any more detailed information than I have. Sometimes it won't happen all day and sometimes it will happen right away. The only things that seems to be consistent are that my PC has been running for a while when it occurs and typically I have lots of programs open at the same time, going back and forth between them all. I suspect that's pretty typical for a developer.

 

[Marco Kalter]

Do you have any colleagues that use PL/SQL Developer? DO they have the same problems? Can you try this on a different PC?

My guess is that this is a problem with the configuation of the PC, that is somehow triggered by PL/SQL Developer. We have not had any similar reports like this, so it must be something exceptional.

 

[Orbity]

My coworkers are all using Windows 2000. I'm the only one on XP Pro.

I'm not aware of anything out of the ordinary with my configuration. I'm using Windows classic theme and generally there are many programs open and working at the time this happens. I'm using the Oracle client version 9.2 and connecting to both Oracle 9.2.0.1.0 and 10.2.0.1.0 servers. I have a 2.4ghz P4 cpu and 512 mb ram. OS is Windows XP Pro service pack 2. I honestly think it has something to do with memory because it seems to happen when there is allot going on.

 

[Orbity]

This ended up being a hardware issue. Thanks for the reponses.