Quickwin program freezes on Windows 7 x64

[Reinaldo_Garcia]

When the program ends and displays the message "...Exit window?", if you click No, the window freezes.
The same program works just fine in Vista x64/XP.
I have Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and compiler 11.1.035.

Any suggestion?

R//G


[Edit by Steve Lionel (Intel) - for information on this problem and to obtain a fix, please readIntel Visual Fortran QuickWin applications freezing]

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Very interesting. MSCTF.DLL is related to the known troublemaker CTFMON.EXE process. It's part of MS Office and handles "Alternative User Input Text Processor" and the Microsoft Office Language Bar. See if the removal instructions in http://support.microsoft.com/kb/282599 make the problem go away for you.

[S__Michael]

I am running Office 2010 Pro 32-bit on Windows 7 Pro 64-bit and have already searched for a way to disable Windows Test Services, but everything that I found said that you cannot disable it on Windows 7.

Do you think that article is still appropriate for me? I don't want to cause more problems while trying to fix this one.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Try the steps shown here - in particular, removing all keyboard layouts other than the one you use. On my Win7 system, I get no language bar because I have only one keyboard defined.

[S__Michael]

That worked.

Under Change KeyboardsI had two listed. The standard US keyboard "EN English (United States) - Keyboard - US " and under "Other - Ink Correction (64bit only)". I removed the "Ink Correction (64bit only)" entry and rebooted. Now MSCTF.DLL is no longer listed as a thread under TASKHOST and my programs no longer hang or crash.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

And with this clue, I can reproduce the hang by adding a keyboard. Thanks! I have let the developers know about this.

[hkausl]

As described in earlier posts, I have this problem with W7 32 bit too. I deleted the additional keyboards, but this does not work. I habe to kill taskhost.exe, then all works. So Steve, is there any solution and when will it be available?

[Steven_L_Intel1]

We have not yet figured out what is going wrong. Yours is the first report of a problem on 32-bit Windows and the first to say that the problem remains after deleting keyboards. We are actively investigating the problem, but it is VERY difficult to diagnose given all the things that are interacting, some not under our control.

[Neels]

I have a user in Greece that has the same problem. He has a dual boot x64 that he can start in both 64 and 32 bit and both has the same issue. I explained the issue about the multiple keyboards to him, he misunderstood (him being Greek and me being Afrikaans) and disconnected the keyboard completely and used the screen keyboard utility that is mouse operated. And now the software runs without freezing. It is a USB keyboard. Next he wants to try the PS2 keyboard but could not get it working - he is still investigating.

[mecej4]

Perhaps we should rejoice that it did not occur to him to use a hammer to 'delete' the keyboard! :)

[Robert_M_Intel4]

After many hours of reading these posts and debugging QuickWin and Windows 7, I'm replying to the posts to see if anything new has changed in this area. We (Fortran RTL engineers) have been trying to track down exactly what the Fortran RTL and/or QuickWin are doing that seems to send Windows 7, and more specifically, taskhost.exe or the thread MSCTF.dll!DllGetClassObject, over the edge and lose the focus on the QuickWin window.

While we can pinpoint the Windows API call that results in the hang, it's not clear why that is happening, and why anything external (running other MS applications, ensuring only one keyboard is configured) would cause this API call to result in what looks like the QuickWin window losing its focus. The call we see that never returns is to WaitForSingleObject(HANDLE, INFINITE).

The investigation continues here. Any new developments or discoveries are appreciated.

Thanks.

Bob Mance

[Neels]

Bob, thanks for the update. If you have any testing you need done or test programs you want to run, I have a user in Finland and one in Greece that are prepared to test.

Neels

[Neels]

Some more info:

On a 32bit Win7 if I start the application with a dialog it never returns focus to the QWin. If I go straigth into the QWin without using the intro dialog it works fine.

I also tested with a dedicated callback for the OK button rather than the default one but the problem persists.

[andrew_4619]

Hi Bob,

I have seen this problem on 3 different W7 x64 machines, one of which has 'self healed' for no obvious reason. In all cases killing taskhost.exe solves issue but this is not news to anybody following this topic.

Out of interest if WaitForSingleObject(HANDLE, INFINITE) is replaced with WaitForMultipleObjects does the problem go away by some other input triggering the focus returning? Some workaround would be very helpful.

Regards
Andrew

[Robert_M_Intel4]

Andrew, et al,

I have what looks to be a fix for this problem. (and there was much rejoicing). We want to try a few more things today and early next week, but hope to post the change here in the form of the library iflogm.lib. When I do that I'll post the x86 and x64 versions.

Unfortunately, the change cannot be made available in 11.1. We hope to get it to the second update for 12.0

Never surrender, never give up.

[Hermann_Zeyen]

Hi everybody,

I have a problem that might be related, but not sure:
I am using a Quickwin program under Windows7, 64bit. The program reads several data sets and plots them to the screen, allowing to modifiy them and then to go on with another data set. In addition, it opens a file at the beginning and writes some control info. Everything works fine for the first data set.

However, when I want to go on, the program freezes when it should close the child window (OPEN(unit, FILE='USER'...). I avoided closing this window, but then the program freezes absolutely randomly, sometimes when trying to write into the output file, sometimes when I want to write a message into window#0. I have change the interactive input to pass through a dialog box instead of window#0, the same: Sometimes it freezes near the first call, sometimes at the second - absolutely random. Up to now, I didn't get it through to the dialog box in the debugger, it freezes before if I make big steps, if I go step by step, it usually gets through to the dialogu box but freezes anywhere.

Has anybody experienced this problem?
I tried all the above suggestions (one single keyboard, Taskhost is not running, I closed all Office programs and VS etc. etc.)

Cheers, H.

[Robert_M_Intel4]

Neels and anyone else experiencing this QuickWin freeze problem,

I have a solution that looks good from this side, but I would like to have it tested using real applications in the field that have experienced this problem. I've posted two attachments for the iflogm.lib library, one for x86 and one for x64. They should be attached here as zip files.

I will watch this forum for feedback on these changes. We want to make this available in the next 12.0 update, so the sooner we can get some real world testing on this the better.

Thanks for all of your input on this problem.

Bob

[Neels]

Bob,
I have only tested it on WinXP 32bit and it now freezes where before it always ran.
Neels

[Robert_M_Intel4]

Hmmm, not what I wanted to read here. Let me push on the XP thing here a bit more, although we did run qwin tests there. I will do some more testing and post again here later today.

Does it freeze in the same way that we see with Windows 7? If so, that is very odd.

If you can, please try it on Windows 7.

These libraries, btw, were built for 11.1, which I assume is what you are running.

Thanks for the road test......

[Robert_M_Intel4]

I've tested the x86 and x64 libraries that are posted here with XP and Windows 7, with the test application, and the test completes without hanging.

I will continue to do testing here (there are multiple reproducers available).

If you could, could you post the program that you are testing, along with any instructions needed to build and run it?

Thanks.

Bob

[Neels]

No, I am running Composer XE 2011 Update 1.

Will test it with 11.1.

I will let you know.

Neels

[Neels]

I does the same with 11.1.

I can zip and send you the complete project if you let me know where to. (vannik07 at gmail dot com)

Neels