Visual C++ 2005 crashes..

[Eelco de Groot]

Hello,

I downloaded Visual C++ Express 2005 about a week ago, I have not really used it as I don't think I know enough about C yet or about C++, but the thing is I twice just started up the program, today and yesterday, I don't think the program can have been doing much, but after about half a minute it completely crashed Windows!

There was no error warning or anything like it before the crash, not even the infamous blue DOS screen as of course there is no DOS anymore in Windows XP, but the screen goes black and there is a complete system reset...

After starting up I get a message that Windows recovered from a serious fault but there is not much to go on in the technical information, that just says there is a mini Dump collected that you can send to the Microsoft folks. I have not done that yet.

All I can think of that maybe it has something to do with the start-up screen, that goes to the Microsoft site to a webpage displaying new Visual Studio products. Nothing else should be happening, unless the compiler tries to open the small demonstration project that I compiled with it and this crashes the system, but I can't believe it does that without even first being told to go to the Projects Directory. I had not much else running at the time, Internet Explorer 7, the Shredder GUI and antivirus software were the main processes in the background, but these have never caused any problems. I actually have never heard of such a complete crash of Windows XP (Running Win XP Pro 32 bit, Service Pack 2 and latest updates).

Does anyone have any ideas what could be happening or maybe have experienced something like this? Should I do a reinstall of Visual C++ before trying to run the compiler? Ideas appreciated!

Eelco.

[Ross Boyd]

Hi Eelco,

There are a few reasons why this can happen. It might be a faulty/dirty RAM module. Or a virus/spyware problem. Or a corrupt executable file. Or a buggy driver (video, sound, etc). Or an IRQ conflict... and so on...

But first, your PC needs to be configured so that it displays information about the error rather than rebooting immediately, so do this...

Right click on My Computer.
Left click on properties
Select Advanced tab
Left click on "Startup and Recovery"-> Settings button
Remove tick from "Automatically restart"
Left click "Ok"

Now, when you get the "Blue Screen Of Death" take note of the type of error. You can Google the error details to get suggestions for a known cause.

Hope this helps,

Ross

[Aleks Peshkov]

Compiling a program is a very memory and processor intensive task.
I suspect system overheat or other hardware failure.

[Eelco de Groot]

Ross and Aleks, thanks very much for your responses!

I changed the settings for Windows XP to not automatically restart upon a system crash, I was surprised that that still works under Windows XP, I think some part of DOS then still remains in the genetic material of Windows! If I get a blue screen error now, I hope it will give some more information.

Windows XP crashed again yesterday upon opening Visual C++, without compiling or even actively opening any project-file by me, I did send the Windows error report with the small memory dump to Microsoft this time.

I have two main suspects, as I wrote I thought maybe the start-up page connecting to the Microsoft website might have something to do with it, as the crash happens right after starting Visual Studio 2005 and I found an article about earlier problems with the Windows XP text messaging system and the Visual C++ debugger, that could lock up the system:
http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=118

I am not using the debugger I think, right after starting up the program but I am not entirely sure the demonstration project was closed properly the last time , so it is possible Visual C++ tried to load that project again -and even may have started some debugging?- even though I did not open any project myself after starting up Visual C++, and this caused the problem somewhere.

By going to the properties tab of Visual C++, clicking the compatibility tab, I found that I could disable advanced text messaging for Visual C++ and after doing that, I have had no further crashes today! -but I tried only twice -

The startup page is now displayed as a separate Window after starting Visual C++ so it is still functional.

The other things that I changed are that

1. I closed the project before exiting the IDE
2. I start up Visual C++ only after closing other applications and especially Internet Explorer, but
3. my virusscanner is still left active. That is the other main possible culprit I thought, maybe the aggressive settings did not like Visual C++ loading the demonstration project and that is why the system crashed. It is a bit unlikely as there is no error or warning from Panda, before or after the crash but if it is this what causes a crash then that is much better than faulty memory or something like that. I am leaving the virusscanner active to see how that goes.

Right now I am very much hoping that disabling all Windows XP text messaging services for Visual C++ Express 2005 does help preventing the system crashes!

Thanks again so far!

Eelco

[Roman Hartmann]

Hi,
did you try to run the compiler from the commandline? Does that work or also result in a crash.

Maybe it's just the GUI crashing the system.

best regards
Roman