Dopus 10 Causes BSOD in XP SP2

Help & Support
21

You know me and my pickiness, Leo, so is there any chance that someone can edit the subject of this discussion to read "BSOD"? That way it will show up in searches that people make?

On topic, I am surprised that people persist with an operating system that is 10 years old. I have one PC running XP because later versions abandoned irreplaceable hardware (a DAB radio tuner card) from a defunct manufacturer.

Unless there is a life threatening loss like that involved, I can see little point in hanging on to an old system, or trying to debug it.

22

Debate-ably "on topic" though - since the observation won't really help the guy assuming he has his own good reason to still be on XP :slight_smile:

Among the very good and valid reasons I think many ppl "persist" with a "10 years old" system:

  • lack of compelling reason to subject themselves to spend time and money getting something new when what they've got still "works" and is still supported by the vendor
  • corporate system provided by employer who is even LESS inclined to ugrade hunderds or thousands of desktops or laptops in the field that are all also still working (at least "well enough" that it doesn't yet "pay" to upgrade - why should any typical company have bothered to upgrade from XP to Vista for instance, nothing compelling with THAT move what with Win7 now also being available concurrently with XP, many companies will be skipping right over Vista).
  • lack of funds to do it even if otherwise inclined to do so...
  • compatibility... like your with hardware, or even software (I have busapps that won't work yet in IE8 or 9, and you can't officially install IE7 on Win7 AFAIK)

So........ I wonder what's causing his blue screen though? :slight_smile:...

community.installshield.com/arch ... 57087.html

Worth maybe trying an Installshield forum for ideas...

23

The Microsoft article says the STOP 0xC000021A error occurs when either Winlogon.exe or Csrss.exe fails.

Those are both low-level Windows components, neither of which Opus uses directly, so why Opus (or its installer) is triggering them to fail on one person's setup (and a VM built in the same way) is very difficult to say without being able to reproduce that setup, and without any other people reporting anything similar.

There's no magic solution for a problem like this, just the debugging steps that Microsoft suggest*, unless someone can stumble upon another person having the same problem (maybe with some other program; I doubt this is specific to Opus, else lots of people would be seeing it) who found a solution.

(*And the other suggestions in the article, e.g. ensuring you didn't install drivers for the wrong hardware, which could come from an OEM Windows XP install disc, or a disk-image backup of XP installed under different hardware, for example.)

24

Yeah... that STOP code seems to be attributed to other components as well though - such as in a goofed up win32k.sys driver MS unleashed at one point some years back. Folks would see instability back then related to network driver activity and graphics related triggers of the BSOD.

Since it crashes inside the Virtual Machine - I wonder if sammyfoo might be willing to provide a copy of the VM image for someone else to try. If the issue was some physical hosting driver - then I'd have expected the "weird" scenario you asked about to possibly happen - like the physical host system blue screening even though the installer was being run inside the VM. That it's the VM itself that is crashing - I'd imagine there's got to be some commonality between the physical and virtual machines that maybe the same thing might happen with that VM IMAGE on another physical host.

25

If it really is down to the installer, an earlier suggestion, maybe it would be worth tracking down something else that uses the same installer to see if that also blows up.

Might not be easy to get something with exactly the same version though.

PS Thanks for fixing the typo.

26

Hi everyone,

I think this is the best place to add my problems with Dopus 10.

In summary, I can't install or use it on one of my XP SP2 machines. I successfully installed it on an XP SP3 machine at work, though I had a crash there once, but now it's running.
At my home machine I am trying to upgrade from the most recent 9.x.x. version. The installer runs ok, asking to restart the system, but after the restart, at the point where Dopus is started, the machine reboots itself and stays in this reboot loop.

I've spent the complete morning trying to get the system back in a usable state. First I booted in safe mode, and restored the last recovery. This allowed me too boot windows again, but of course, Opus 9 files have been overwritten by Opus 10. Trying to start dopus.exe results in an immediate reboot.

I couldn't uninstall 10, because it was not present in Control Panel - Software, so I went to reinstall Dopus 9. This went ok, but trying to run the newly installed Dopus - immediate reboot.

The next step was to uninstall 9, which was now present in Control Panel - Software, and after that reinstalling 10. This time the installer didn't even complete, but rebooted in the middle of the process.

During all this, I had the BSOD screens mentoined by sammyfoo a couple of times, but I didn't keep log of all this, I simply wanted to get to work.

At the moment I have the Opus 10 files in my program folder, but running it reboots the system at once.

Let me say that I've been an enthusiastic Opus user for years, and I like to keep using Opus. At the moment however, it's not only unusable for me, but I' having big troubles even going back to version 9. After years of upgrades without any sign of trouble, this is disappointing. The suggestions from leo or steje, which I always valued high, are not very helpful in this issue. I dont want to consider installing SP3 or migration from XP to vista or 7 - thats not the question. I don't want to think about problems with Installshield or even going into kernel debugging - I'm techie enough to do it, but I can't afford the time.
It's good to hear that I'm not alone with these problems. It surely is related to some specific configuration, but - as I said - up to the latest version 9.x.x I had no problems whatsoever. I'd appreciate any help, and of course I am filing this with the official GP support.

thanks,
Rudolf

27

Addendum: Fortunately, I managed to reinstall 9.5.6.0.3937 which is running stable - won't touch it until 10 is more promising.

Rudolf

28

You have to install SP3. There's no getting around it.

Windows XP SP2 isn't supported by Microsoft. As a result, we cannot support it either because Microsoft's software development tools no longer support it and no longer guarantee software we build with them will work on it.

You'll also be missing essential security updates from Microsoft as a result of staying on SP2 past the end of its Microsoft support cycle.

Windows XP SP3 is years old. There's no reason not to have installed it by now, especially if not having SP3 is now causing problems like this.

Get your OS into a Microsoft-supported state, then worry about tools like Opus.

Update: After reading stories from other developers who have seen similar problems with XP SP2, the issue is likely a bug in XP, which was fixed years ago in SP3, that causes the OS to crash when an exe has a manifest (which controls various Windows features and how the app can use them) that includes things SP2 does not understand. We can't change the manifest because we need it the way it is to enable certain features on Windows 7.

Install SP3 to fix your OS.

29

The following pretty webpage states the date of end of support of SP2 of Windows XP:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/help/end-support

But it doesnt say when support of Windows XP SP3 ends. I had thought that Windows XP (no matter which SP number) isnt supported anymore because it's over 10 years old. I am surprised to read that Microsoft still supports XP.. :slight_smile:

30

Wikipedia's Windows XP article has the details, and a link to the Microsoft page that has them as well:

"Extended Support until April 8, 2014 (only Service Pack 3 x86 and Service Pack 2 x64)"

31

[quote="leo"]Update: After reading stories from other developers who have seen similar problems with XP SP2, the issue is likely a bug in XP, which was fixed years ago in SP3, that causes the OS to crash when an exe has a manifest (which controls various Windows features and how the app can use them) that includes things SP2 does not understand. We can't change the manifest because we need it the way it is to enable certain features on Windows 7.

Install SP3 to fix your OS.[/quote]

Here's the Microsoft KB article about the XP SP2 bug, along with a hotfix for it (which you'll already have if you've installed SP3 sometime in the last three years, which is why XP SP3 is OK):

support.microsoft.com/kb/921337

32

The installer has now been updated to require a minimum of XP SP3 and prevent installation on XP SP2.

33

Thanks for your help, I moved to SP3 and all is well now.
I suggested to Greg to state the requirements on the homepage and include a check in the installer, I see GP has been quicker.

Rudolf

34

I also decided to try D Opus 10, and I experienced the same instant BSOD the moment the installer finished and also when I tried to start the program.

I can install SP3 but I am in the middle of a project and my system works perfectly, and there are no 100% guarantees my system will work equally as well after the update.
And it is strange that so many tools and programs work and install without problems and D Opus is the only one that can crash the system.
I didn't even knew an installer or the start of a program can close the system like that.

I will try the hotfix suggested here.

About the reason why someone would cling to an OS so old, it could be a user preference, like the reason someone would prefer their car red instead of blue :slight_smile:
Or a watch with analogue arms instead of the much newer digital watch with lcd screen.

Of course since I work in high-end 3d graphics world creation and rendering and I have a high-end computer, I can't postpone forever the OS upgrade, but thank GOD, programs used in the film industry like 3ds max and Maya still work in XP SP2.

I think it's quite ironic. Most of the computers used solely for youtube and mail checking are always updated and strong computers used in heavy simulations and graphics, run older OS's.

35

The installer was changed months ago so that it would not even install on XP SP2. Same with the portable (USB export) version.

Are you using an ancient version of the Opus installer as well as an ancient, unsupported (even by Microsoft) version of Windows? (Or do we have a problem with our installer not detecting SP2 properly?)

Nobody is telling you you have to move from Windows XP -- that won't happen until 2014 when Microsoft drop XP support -- but you should at least be using the latest updates and fixes for Windows XP.

XP SP3 was released in April/May 2008, for god's sake. If you still haven't installed OS updates which are four years old then you only have yourself to blame if you run into problems.

Microsoft's tools for building Windows software don't even allow us to ensure compatibility with XP SP2 anymore. XP SP3 is the earliest thing they can target.

36

Poor comparison. Think of it more like a watch with an LCD screen that has a calendar stuck in the 20th century rather than one that looks the same but works in the 21st century.

I also like to be behind the bleeding edge, but I would never risk running with an operating system that was written long before the software that I now use.

You must have been dismissing Microsoft's monthly updates for some years now. Worrying.

Seriously, for tour own sake, do something about this now. Before all that fancy work evaporates.

37

No, your installer works as it should. But sometime ago I used a "desktop tools" program to change the label from SP2 into SP3 to install Sony Vegas and that program worked without a problem.

No need to get angry, i've acknowledged my fault, using a vintage OS :slight_smile: from biblical times.

And I understand why GPSoftware can't offer support for SP2.
But how come companies like Autodesk and others manage to somehow "trick" the system and still offer programs working on older OS's ?
And they will probably do this even past 2014, while D Opus won't work anymore on XP ?

Is it because they are large companies and somehow have more budget for this ?

Before anyone accuses me I'm resistant to change, I can't wait to install the latest updates for 3ds max and other programs.
I also use iOS and I quite like their latest versions.

But I can't say the same thing about some of the updates and newer OS from Microsoft. That's why I'm careful about updates and I do workflow tests before I adopt them on my work machine.

38

So you've kept your OS in an outdated, unsupported state but found that caused problems when installing some software. Rather than fixing that by installing the years-old OS updates, you modified the OS to break the version-checking API and make things even more non-standard and unsupported...

It's your computer and you can do whatever you want with it, but we have no interest in supporting that scenario. My advice is to fix your computer and get it in a supported state, rather than worry about why things don't work or which hacks you can apply to trick things into working without installing the updates.

I completely understand having a cautious approach to OS updates and not wanting to install them the day they are released, but ignoring OS updates for years, past the point that the OS vendor themselves require those updates, and then modifying the OS so it pretends the updates are installed, is simply not sensible. That is going out of your way to cause yourself more problems than it could possibly have avoided.

I'm just going to lock the thread now. It is a waste of our time and yours to talk about this. If you can't already see what's wrong and how to solve it then I don't think further discussion is going to help anyone.