Startup failure

Recently, SmartFTP would occassionally give me an "Out of memory" dialog after hitting OK in the splash dialog, and the program would go away. Then I'd try to start again, and it would work. This morning, I got that message once but since then have not been able to initialize SmartFTP at all.

When executed, SmartFTP gives me the splash screen and shows under the task manager. As soon as I hit OK, the program immediately disappears from even the Processes tab in the task manager, so I never get the client window. Steps I have tried:

- Reboot XP Pro SP2
- Uninstall, redownload .1006 build (which I was already using), reinstall
- Uninstall, download beta build, reinstall
- Skim forum for known startup issues
- Created a new user account in XP; it is able to start but has none of my saved login data
- Copied %APPDATA%\SmartFTP\Client 2.0\Favorites\Quick Connect folder from my real login to the test login user folder
- Test login can still startup and has the quick connect hosts available

So I am pretty sure the startup failure has something to do with information SmartFTP has associated with my XP user login, either in the registry or the %APPDATA%\SmartFTP\Client 2.0\ folder. The only thing I really care about saving are my various host logins. It appears I can keep those by saving the Quick Connect folder as described above.

In order to get me backup and running, I then did these steps:

- Export registry tree for HKEY_CURRENT_USER for the Software ... Client 2.0 node (for safe keeping)
- Export registry tree for the test user for the Software ... Client 2.0
- Delete registry tree for HKEY_CURRENT_USER
- Global scan and replace user ID in test user file with HKEY_CURRENT_USER
- Merge in modified registry tree

So the bottom line is I'm back up and running, and can live with the loss of anything which may have been lost in the process, since I still have my various host login credentials. This post is more of a heads up that there must be some condition possible which causes SmartFTP to abort on initialization, without even giving an error messages. Nothing was logged in XP's event viewer either.

If you are interested in having me troubleshoot this more for you sake, I can restore my saved registry settings to recreate the problem, then try changing/deleting any specific values in the registry to you want to help narrow down why the initialization fails. I'm offering to do this just because I like this program so well, and it could help save others in the future who are less well versed in mucking with the registry.

Thank you for your report.

We are interested what causes SmartFTP to crash. Maybe you can restore your backup step by step and see at what point you get the crash.

I believe the problem is very likely with the registry settings. So I would first restore the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SmartFTP\Client 2.0 branch from you backup.
If it crashs you can send us the .reg export and we can debug the problem here. If it doesn't crash restore the Favorites (Quick Connect) files.

Thank you for your help.

Regards,
-Mat
SmartFTP

Matt,

[I believe the problem is very likely with the registry settings. So I would first restore the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SmartFTP\Client 2.0 branch from you backup.
If it crashs you can send us the .reg export and we can debug the problem here.[/quote]

Yes, I can recreate the problem by restoring the registry settings without restoring app data folders.

I have the .reg tree saved both in Unicode (XP style .reg file) and ASCII (Win9X style .reg file) formats. I did the ASCII versions just to make it easier to scan and replace my test user branch with HKEY_CURRENT_USER. Hindsight being what it is, I probably should have just switched logins to my test user then exported it's current user branch. But you know what they say: hindsight may be 20/20, but you still look like a hind.

So do you want ASCII or Unicode? And what address would you like me to send it too?

Doug

Hello ..

Please send the unicode version of the .reg file (please zip/rar it) to sales at smartftp.com

Thanks again
-Mat

We are interested what causes SmartFTP to crash.

Hi,

I don't have as much debug info, but I have encountered the same problem on a couple of systems (forcing me to use inferior FTP software!).

The thing the systems have in common, except that I am the user and the software installed is similar, is that they are multi-monitor systems.

I have found that disabling one of the monitors will allow SmartFTP to start. I use software called UltraMon to do this on the fly.

This could be a red herring, but I hope it will give you a clue as to what the problem is.

Cheers,
Alex

Hello Alex ..

Thank you for the additional information. Are you able to reproduce the crash in any way or does it just happen sporadically?

I believe you are correct with your assumption. SmartFTP saves the coordinates of all windows and controls in the registry. Now if your monitor setup changes (2-monitor to 1-monitor) the screen coordinates saved in the registry may not work with the real screen coordinates. Due to missing sanity checks in SmartFTP or the lack of full multi monitor awareness this will result in a crash described by you and dwh.

I'm convinced we will be able to find and fix the bug if you can provide us step-by-step instructions on how to reproduce it.

Regards,
-Mat

I believe you are correct with your assumption. SmartFTP saves the coordinates of all windows and controls in the registry. Now if your monitor setup changes (2-monitor to 1-monitor) the screen coordinates saved in the registry may not work with the real screen coordinates. Due to missing sanity checks in SmartFTP or the lack of full multi monitor awareness this will result in a crash described by you and dwh

Interesting observation. I am also running multi-monitor mode, and while my monitor configuration per se has not changed, it could be related. There are times that I am out of my office and using Remote Desktop Connection to access my system. When doing so, RDC will automagically temporarily disable all but the primary monitor, then restore the configuration when I disconnect. So it is possible my problems happened after exiting in a different configuration mode.

So I tried various combinations of exiting SmartFTP with the app positioned on a secondary monitor and restarting SmartFTP with a different logical monitor arrangement, so that the coordinates from the previous save would not be valid upon startup. I didn't get it to duplicate the problem.

So this is just to confirm that I too am running multi-monitor, though I was not able to replicate the problem moving monitor arrangements even when I exit SmartFTP with what would be negative numbers for the windows coordinates (because the secondary is to the logical left of the primary, making the coordinates negative relative to 0,0 ).

I had sent you my registry settings which fail, so you may want to look at the saved coordinates in that file. Or tell me which registry entries to remove from the *.reg and have me try an import back into my system again and see if it circumvents the problem.

Doug

Hello Doug ...

I haven't received the .reg file. Can you resend it to sales at smartftp dot com. Please zip/rar the .reg first.

Thank you
Regards,
-Mat

Mat,

Hello Doug ...

I haven't received the .reg file. Can you resend it to sales at smartftp dot com. Please zip/rar the .reg first.

Well that would explain why I didn't hear back from you. I was a little surprised at that, since you originally replied on the forum pretty quick during off hours.

I bet I sent as *.reg file and it got bounced by a server as potential malware. I sent as a zip this time.

Doug

Doug reported that the latest version of SmartFTP v2.5.1006.8 does no longer crash with the previous registry settings. We believe the problem was related to a bug we have fixed in a recent version.

I'd like to thank everybody who contributed its time and efforts to help us find and fix this problem.

Best Regards,
-Mat

Doug reported that the latest version of SmartFTP v2.5.1006.8 does no longer crash with the previous registry settings.

Correct -- it works again now even if I restore the registry settings saved when I was having trouble. Let me also add that I'm very [\i][\b]impressed by the support they provided. They responded in 7 minutes to my first post. The only reason this didn't close out sooner is I think my original email to them with the *.reg file was bounced because of the file extension, and they would have rightly assumed I just did not follow up and send the file. When I became aware of that yesterday, I sent it to them again as a zip. They worked with at and couldn't recreate the problem even during off hours.

When they could not recreate it with the latest beta build, they asked me to try and it worked for me too. But they did all of this in off hours, and each time very fast after I provided information.

Very impressive.

Doug