PC & Adobe Crashes & How To Deal With Them - Part Three

The Blue Screen of Death or worse BSOD and no error/dump file! What's a person to do?

After you've tested your disk, your memory, ran all sorts of virus and malware search and destroy tools and every test comes up clean.... and you still have system crashes! Well you might just have a driver problem. But what driver? There may be a hundred or more.

Finding tools to do all the appropriate tests online may take the better part of an afternoon if you don't already have them handy, and then running the test may take days depending on how thorough they are. I've learned my lesson. Before I go through all that I will follow the simply outline below to see if system crashes are caused by a missing, corrupt, outdated, or wrong driver.

First, thanks to NetWork World for publishing the this article. Read the article for details.

In my case I found that a Nvidia driver had somehow gone bad. By following the procedure outlined in the article I was able to locate the culprit and stop the crashes in minutes, after having spent days doing needless system testing.

You will need to download WinDbg at the Microsoft site here. After installing the tools run WinDbg. The WinDbg GUI is not pretty, and as any debugger there are a lot of complex commands, but by following the simple instructions written by Dirk Smith in the article I found my answer, that is, which driver was causing the crash. I went to the Nvidia site for the download, reinstalled the driver and my problems were over.

One catch for me was that my crashes were not producing dump files even though it was set up to do so under My Computer > properties > advanced  > startup and recovery > system failure. Insure that you have your PC set up to provide a crash dump file. Without a dump file of the crash you cannot use the debugger. During my prior analysis of memory usage I noted that I had virtual memory page files on all drives except the C: drive. I did that because I didn't want VM competing with other activities on C:. The dump file was supposed to go to C:/windows. Just as a shot in the dark I created a pagefile on C: too, and wha-la, during the next crash a dump file was created. Coincidence? I'm guessing yes, but on the other hand not having a pagefile on C: may be taken by Windows as your not wanting to use space on C: for system related files like pagefiles and dumps which at times can be large.

System crashes can be deeply mysterious, but by following this outline you can detect what driver may be causing the problem or at least potentially eliminate drivers as the culprit. The debugger can do a lot more of course and might even detect other sources of a crash. But that's too deep of a dive for this post.

If drivers are not your issue, then spending time look for malware may be warranted, and that's a topic too large for this post.

Checking your disk and memory is fairly easy though it may takes many hours depending how large they are. Here are some decent tools in that regard as well as general health check sources.

Look over parts One and Two of this series for other troubleshooting tips.

Micosoft help with drivers
Microsoft debugging tool
Microsoft virus tools
Microsoft help with deceptive software 
How to read memory dumps
Generic disk checking software by Seagate
How to check your disk 
Memory testing tool (there is a free version too)

PC & Adobe Crashes & How To Deal With Them - Part Two

Adobe products crashing at startup and during use is somewhat common across versions (CS3, CS4, etc) and across products. A quick web search will show numerous causes and solutions, and trying each might take some time until you hit on the right solution.

This post outlines some tools and concepts which can help speed your way to a solution by confirming if a potential solution may help in your particular case. Trying things randomly in desperation could in fact make things worse. So it is good to have some confirming information that a potential system or application change may be right for you.

See part Three and part One of this series for other troubleshooting tips.

The Windows Event Viewer (EV) is an important place to look for error message from your application and from the system in general. EV is found (on an XP machine) by going to the Start menu > All Programs > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer. As seen in the EV's main window above an error occurred on 1/23/2014 at 4:56 PM. Doubling clicking that row will take you to the message for that event. This event occurred during a start up crash of Adobe Media Encoder.

I typically take note of keywords used in the message then do a web search to see what can be found such as: amewrapper, event 1000, media encoder. This information might be helpful to Adobe should you need to open a trouble ticket. However there is a better source of information.

I was actually trying to fix Premiere Pro (PP) from crashing, but wanted to see if related applications would also crash. There were no events recorded by EV when PP crashed. Those events were being handled by an Adobe error handler. These error files and dumps are located at

Windows Vista & Win 7: C:\Users\user name\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Media Encoder

Windows XP C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Adobe Media Encoder

or

Windows XP C:\Documents and Settings\user name\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\LogTransport\Logs\Archive\ 

The following is a section at the top of the error log (xml file) from PP created by the Adobe Crash Reporter. A symbolname is tech talk for something that is loaded into memory (at an address) and that memory location has a name which is used by the application to access functionality. In this case the AMEWrapper GetWriterList is involved in some sort of memory access violation.

crash exception="EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION" instruction="0x06bc34aa"
stackStatement index="0" address="0x06bc34aa" symbolname="AMEWrapper::GetWriterList"

I'm not an expert in reading these error files but at the very end of this xml file is the following line, and I noticed references to QuickTime throughout the error report.

path="C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Premiere Pro CS4\MediaIO\writers\QuickTimeWriter.vwr"/

It is suspicious that the error report ended on Quicktime Writer and the AMEWrapper indicates something about getting a Writer List. It is easy to see correlations and jump too quickly to a solution, but by looking at these error files you can create a list of key words to begin your web search. In my case I searched using the following key word in different combinations and I came up with several potential solutions.

> "premiere pro" crash on startup
> AMEwrapper
> Quicktime
> GetwriterList

Here are a few suggested pages and sites which are trust worthy sources of information.

http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/global/troubleshoot-system-errors-freezes-windows.html
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4916926
http://premierepro.wikia.com/wiki/Troubleshooting

In my case there were a lot of hits on PP not starting due to Quicktime, and actually quite a few other things. I don't use Quicktime so uninstalling it would be a system change that would not affect me nor is there much risk to the system. Other suggested system changes like changing cache settings, removing files, or the ubiquitous suggestion of software reinstallation involve more serious changes. I would need more proof those procedures would actually work in my case. Instead, I simply uninstalled Quicktime and my problem went away for PP and the media encoder.

Lucky guess? Not really. It was based on evidence in my error files combined with many posts stating a crash causing relationship between Quicktime and some Adobe apps, and it was chosen as one of my first attempts because it was low risk. Education guess... you bet!

Video and audio drivers are a common cause of problems and it never hurts do double check that you are on the most current set of bug fixes by updating your drivers. More on this in my next post. In fact, any driver could lead to different types of instability.

After fixing the startup crash, PP would still crash after a little initial use. Applying the procedure outlined I looked at the report generated by the Adobe Crash Reporter and found the following lines after the EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION line.

symbolname="AIF::OGL::Context::makeCurrent"

I did a web search on the symbolname and it took me to the Adobe forum where the advice was to look closely at my graphics card. There may be something wrong with its Open GL capabilities. That kind of made sense given the OGL evidence. I habitually look for triangulation on the problem, that is, evidence coming from multiple sources before taking a deep dive into a potential solution. I checked and I was in 32 and not 16 bit mode, and I had already updated my graphics card driver. Consequently, I needed more proof that it was an graphics card issue. Looking further down in the post there were other suggestions which I skipped, but there was one indicating the need to upgrade Microsoft's Intellitype and Intellipoint technologies. These are known to crash Adobe products if the drivers are out of date.

My drivers were out of date by quite a bit. The upgrade would be simple and it would be a low risk operation. I confirmed the problem at other sites. So I did the upgrade and the problem was resolved. I'm glad I didn't spend hours trying to figure out what was wrong with OGL settings.

The take away from this is that out of date, corrupted, or over written drives can caused serious problems. On HP systems it is easy to get a complete report on which drivers you have when working through application and system crashes. The HP Performance Advisor gives a very thorough report on just about everything you need to know about your system. The report includes sections on: System, BIOS, OS, Processors, Storage devices, Security settings, Power Management, Bus Options, Slots and Slot Usage, Graphics Card, Display, Memory, ROM, Sensors, Fans... need I continue. It will just about tell you what color your computer cabinet is.

Of course drivers are listed in Microsoft's System Information tool under Software Environment. Device Manager (found on the Computer Management screen below) also provides an adequate view of your system. See more information on MS Computer management.

The WinZip company has a product called Driver Updater that is supposed to find  updates for your drivers. As much as drivers should stay current I wouldn't go for a wholesale update. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Intel will scan your PC for out of date drivers with their Update Driver Utility for free, but I found it of limited use. Microsoft has their own products too.

Computers can crash simply because a heat sensor has detected that the CPU or other component is too hot. For HP systems the Performance Advisor will graphically show you the current and historical temperature, and the RPM of the fans that are supposed to be cooling the system.

When dealing with mysterious system crashes which do not seem driver related and a web search on key words found in error logs have failed to provide a solution, then the problem may be more insidious, requiring a full system check.

Every component must be checked and eliminated as a cause. If you don't have an HP system there are generic tools out there to help. HWMonitor by CPUID will show you if your system is overheating. Extensive memory checks can be done with MemTest by HCI Design. Hard disk checks can be done with Microsoft's check disk tool found at My Computer > right click the disk of interest > properties > tools > Error Checking. You can find the defrag too there too which should be run as needed. Seagate and Western Digital supply their own disk checking utilities also.

This post has already gotten out of control, but I'll mention one more useful tool for advance debugging and that's the Performance tool which is part of the Microsoft Management Console. This tool enables you to customize monitoring on specific system components, set alerting thresholds, and track system performance over time. The graph below was customized to show memory pages per sec, Disk Queuing, and processor utilization. This is a really cool tool if your problems are resource related and you need to tie system or application problems to resource utilization.

PC & Adobe Crashes & How To Deal With Them - Part One

 Part One of this series focuses on what is running on your PC after startup which optionally can be removed to save resources and to reduce application conflicts.

First the disclaimer. There are literally as many reasons for PC and application crashes as there are PC and applications. There are some very helpful tools however to diagnose and hopefully fix your problems. One must have is Microsoft's Autoruns system internals tool.

It has always been painful to determine just what services, apps, drivers, ddl, etc are loaded on your PC, where they are loaded from, and when.

How about finding old apps that didn't completely uninstall, or worse, apps that you didn't even know were installed?

How about finding new additions which may be causing a problem, or, what can be removed if your PC has been slowing down.

Microsoft's Autoruns in the answer to all of the above and more. Autoruns can be found at the MS technet site.

The image above shows the Autoruns and all the rows of data are what is being loaded at system startup. The first screenfull shows items from the registry at HKLM\Software\microsoft\windows\currentVersion\run. The 'run' key in the registry is one of my such places that apps are started from when a PC boots. Autoruns shows all the locations that are commonly used and many not so common locations. Simply scroll down and you will see hundreds of items loaded at startup.

You might be surprised just what you see when you fire up the tool.

My PC is going on seven years old and in that time many pieces of software have been loaded with and without my knowledge, many uninstalled leaving junk behind (or not really uninstalled at all), and many services and drivers that just don't need to startup automatically or at all.

Finding and removing old junk is one use. Another important use is just to take a snapshot of your PC using this tool when it is healthy. You can then compare a later snapshot (after you start to have problems or slowdowns) and determine what has changed on your PC.

It is easy to turn off an app or service etc just by checking the box on the far left. I would be careful about deleting them however. When turning things off do them one or two at a time, then restart your PC to insure that it is working OK. If you have a lot of stuff to turn off ( I turned of over thirty items), then do it over a period of days, making sure everything is working fine. If you don't mind bouncing your PC many times you can make quite a few changes in one day. 

If it ain't broke don't fix it. But if you start to have problems then this tool can easily tell you what has changed and how to systematically determine which of the changes are causing the problem.

Signpost In The Road

This is the first posting in several years. There have been a lot of changes the most notable is that I am no longer do glass work. We moved from Minnesota and I left my studio behind and sold all of the equipment. About all that I kept was my photography gear and a bunch of tools.

No particular reason for the changes. Just time to move on.

Teaching Weaving, Dripping, Pressing, Carving, Drawing, & Texturizing

This will be a multi-part post on what has turned into a marathon glass fusing class. I have to admit to an unorthodox approach to teaching. The basic approach is to give a broad overview of the technical basics, have them work small for a few weeks, then do a scaled down version of a final project, then finally do to the finale project. This might be doable in a six week course except that I also let them choose their own projects however grand or unassuming their aspirations may be. That's where the complications set in, and also I feel, where the most important learning occurs through encouraging and tempering as the case may be.

 

It is a challenge to say the least having a group of students all going their own direction on projects which vary from just a few dollars and one firing to several hundred dollars with complex techniques and multistage firings. I have to learn as much as they do - about their skill level, their ability to attend to detail, their ability to plan, and more important decipher what their sense of  aesthetics are and how I might help them express that in glass. All of that can't be done in six weeks. After 10 weeks you might if you're lucky begin to understand the student enough to help them take their first tentative steps on their glass journey.

The image above illustrates what is called kiln carving. Impressions are made in glass by cutting designs into ceramic fiber paper which can range in thickness depending on how deep of an impression you desire. Glass is laid on top of the cut outs, and as the kiln heats the glass flows like honey into and around the cut outs. In the example you can see both an impression into the glass on the right and a relief on the surface of the glass on the left. This is accomplished by using both the 'positive' cut out shape, and also saving the 'negative' space/hole left in the ceramic paper from the cut out. The glass flows down into the negative spaces while it also flows over and around the positive cut outs.

I typically include a glass weaving project (image above) early in the course, because glass cutting skills are exercised by cutting a lot of thin strips of glass. Bending glass is learned as well as seeing how molds are made and used. I also learn each student's color preferences, and I get a sense of their dexterity level. It also helps them over their fear of glass which everyone has initially. 

In my last class I had them create their own colored glass by sifting glass power onto clear glass. The idea is to get them use to taking full control over their color choices by creating their own color gradations and mixes. It is too easy and somewhat uncreative just to buy your glass, cut it up, and fuse it. I call this the 'cut and paste' approach which quite literally a child can do. Of course, cut and paste is ubiquitous in glass fusing and can lead to some very impressive results. However, realizing that you can and should attempt to control every element of design is one of the important steps leading from craft to art. As good as this idea might have been, their 'customized' glass was much harder to cut than the off-the-shelf stuff, and we had to start over.

 

I like to think of stock glass as simply the materials to build an image. Going beyond cut and paste is a key part of my personal aesthetic, and I think a teacher is always going to bias their students one way or another. The dripping project is a very good example of how to move well beyond cut and paste. The image to the left is a stack of cut up glass. It is setting on top of a stainless steel grate. When heated it flows through the grate forming a wholly new mix of glass. Any number of other techniques could then be applied to this mix as a starting point for other projects. I simply presented the idea to the class in an unbiased manner ( it is something I aways wanted to try) along with many other project options, and two students chose to explore dripping (to my pleasure).

A related technique to dripping would be raking. When the glass is still molten you can use a metal rake to drag through the glass forming color patterns in the glass with the rake's fingers. I'm glad that they didn't press me to do that technique. Reaching into a 1600 degree kiln is.... well, not really advisable, but people often do put their mark, so to speak, in glass by raking.

To end the first installment of this series of posts is an example of an exercise in texture and line. It takes several years, if not a lifetime, to explore the elements of design (line, shape, form, texture, color, pattern, etc). Eventually, an artist settles in on a certain style, and that style can be broken down and seen by how they use the elements of design in a composition adhering to sound design principles.

In the image below the exploration of line and texture was the focus of the project. The student was inspired by a picture of a glass project that had line drawings created by tracing through sifted glass powder. Several attempts were made to capture that style.. The bold red rings were created using glass paste, the blue line scribbles were done using a Sgraffito approach which is simply tracing lines through powder with a stick. The faint red circles on the left were created by pushing a round object into powder, creating impressions in the powder.

There are also three distinct textures of glossy, mat and sandy which adds a tactile dimension. As a line and texture study this piece was a huge learning adventure. It also helped the student realize the importance of working small so that ideas can be tested quickly at reduced cost. Glass is terribly expensive, in many ways unforgiving, and requires a capacity for delayed gratification. It can been weeks, and all too often months, before what seemed a simple technique is mastered. Projects often need multiple firings and you can't see the results for 24 hours or more. The learning feedback loop is sometimes extended beyond the student's capacity to wait for a result, and understandably so.

In my glass adventures I have to admit I've been frustrated more often than gratified, mostly because I wanted glass to do something that may be better approached in another medium. My goal as a teacher is to reduce the frustration level for students while at the same time not boring them with small exercises. This is one of many balancing acts that makes a good teacher, and the more I learn the easier the journey will be for all.

New Directions & Old Via Train

Things are finally setting down after a visit with my mother in Pittsburgh who is still recovering from surgery. My mother-in-law passed away in November and on top of that I had been working two full time jobs. It was a crazy four months, but I couldn't pass up the consulting money, and of course, I couldn't cancel my classes. I'm not the best juggler of time, but I managed. The worst of it was driving to a stained glass class, then realizing I didn't have any glass cutters with me! Thank god for your local True Value!

Anyway... The train gives you a lot of time to think and relax, and it was a very relaxing trip. Not only was I on a journey to Pittsburgh, but I also formally began my journey with enameling. I spent most of my time studying from magazines and books. I'm attracted to the media by the type of detailing it offers which glass fusing does not. I'm already envisioning large fused glass panels with enameled details added.

This is going to be an involved creative journey. Enameling is in many respects more complex than glass fusing, because of the addition of metalsmithing. It will take several years of exploring before I create something substantial. There are a lot of skills, tools, and materials to master. It will be a perfect complement to fusing, expanding my visual vocabulary immensely. I've been working with copper in my fusing panels and mica along with gold and silver in my torchwork. Enameling will enable me to create detailed work with metal and glass which has so far eluded me. The closest I've come is the detail found in my Metal Marbles which are created by adding gold, silver, copper, and raw oxides while torchworking glass.

 

The image above is from a coal energy plant outside of Chicago - beautiful poison going into the air 24/7. I thought I might stop off at the Art Institute during my Chicago layover, but it was just too cold to be running around. Besides I had my camera and with so little time I'd rather create my own images.



Union Station was my target. It was a great overcast day and the aged glass ceiling gave me the perfect lighting conditions. Well, kind of. My lenses aren't the fastest so I had to shoot with ISOs above 3200. On my Nikon D2x they have low light settings called H1 and H2 which are somewhere around ISO 6400 or so. The images are typically very noisy and not useful for much, but I ran the files through Topaz DeNoise and it creates something usable for the type of look I'm after. Other Topaz filters smooth out the images even further in the process of abstracting them. Union Station was a nice diversion for the couple of hours that I had between trains. I could probably shoot that building for several days.

Heading to Pittsburgh has always been like a journey into the past. Jean and I have lived in Minnesota for over twenty years, and I really haven't continually lived in Pittsburgh since the seventies. During the trip however I focused a lot on the future, because we have recently decided to move from Minnesota. The hours passed  and  the train gently rocked and swayed as thoughts of starting someplace anew mingled with images of glass designs.

While in Pittsburgh I spent some time with my niece who is starting her first semester in college. She's not sure what to major in and I can relate to that, because I'm not exactly sure what skills will match up with what opportunity for me when we move. I hope to solidify something, but I'm also OK with moving and  letting circumstances take me down a totally new path.

It's kind of like being a freshmen again. I might even go back to school. Not so much for another degree though. One thing for sure I will will not be able to do the Have Kiln Will Travel escapades. We are planning to move to a small community which because of its size would not support that type of teaching adventure. I currently teach in over 30 different adult programs and art centers.

I would like to get involved on some level teaching glass, but I'm not sure what the format will be. Teaching took over my life in the last year. Designing and refining classes replaced the goals I set out for Designs For Good. But that's OK. The last year has given me a solid new skill. How it will be applied I'll leave open for now.

The image above was shot in the old US Steel building downtown Pittsburgh. Like the reflection of me I feel neither here nor there. The past is past and the future undefined, and that's exciting.

West View Park Revisted

 

I haven't been home to Pittsburgh in a number of years and will be taking a train there next week. At the same time Jean and I are thinking of moving, and I have been going through a lot of belongings that I don't intend to relocate with. I came across some old black and white film shots taken in the seventies of West View amusement park in Pittsburgh before they tore it down. This park was the site of our yearly school picnic, and was loved by everyone. All things must pass as they say, and the park couldn't keep up with changing times. Folks back home might like to reminisce about the park so I'll print these out and take them on my trip.

The picture above is the main hill of The Dips. A creaky-clanky ride that inched up the steep hill seemingly taking forever to get to the top. Once at the top there was a brief moment where you were on top of the world, then only to have the bajeebus scared out of you on the down slop. The down slop was actually deeper than can be seen in the picture.

If I'm remembering correctly you just put a leather seat belt on and the hand rails you see above swung back to basically keep you in your seat. Of course if you were brave you wouldn't hold onto the hand rail. You would then get tossed about in the seat and smash into the person sitting next to you from the force of the turns.

The ride was definitely of another era. You can see the manual breaking lever to the left in the picture above and the break linkage. For me it looks Victorian or what is now called Steampunk.

 

The shot above is the entry point to The Dips. I remember my first time waiting in line to get on the ride. I was hoping they would close for lunch before I got there. It was agonizing waiting and waiting and I just didn't want to be there. I couldn't leave for fear of being laughed at. So I chose the less of two fears and stayed in line. It wasn't bad... if you don't mind the feeling of your stomach floating out of your body.... or something like that.

 

The park itself was around a mile or so long carved out of a valley. Originally there was a lake/swap area that The Dips went around and on top of as it meandered its way back to its debarking point. The swap was eventually filled in to make way for more rides, but the park just didn't have the space to keep up with the million dollar rides that were becoming vogue at other parks.

The shot above shows The Dips in the background and The Haunted House on the right. You can also see the Alpine Ride towers on the left and the arcades in the center of the picture.

 Then there was The Racing Whipit! It had some dips but was really known for a lot of sharp turns and for speed. Two sets of cars 'raced' to get to the end. You could actually shout 'losers' to the people in the other set of cars when the cars ran along side by side.... as though you really had any control over who was going to 'win' the race to the end.

The image above shows the overgrown vegetation on the bottom of the track. The park had been abandoned for several years when I took these pictures. You could walk all of the place and do just about anything you wanted. I guess it was impossible to fence it all off. Remarkably I don't recall seeing any vandalism, graffiti or other signs of abuse. I'm sure some items were stolen.

In the shot below you can see the two sets of cars poised for the next race that never happened, and the track's hair pin turns in the background.

 I used Photoshop and Topaz plugins to colorize and abstract the images. I love Topaz. It enables infinite control to adjust any image to any feeling I want to create.