Mulitple Topics With Snippets Crash RH8

[SL_Amplify]

If I have more than two topics that contain snippets open and I try to open a third topic - regardless of whether it contains a snippet - RH8 hangs. On my Windows box (Pentium Dual-Core, 2.6GHz; 3.25GB of RAM), the CPU usage jumps to 70-100%, and if I leave RoboHelp running, the Memory Usage continues to grow (from 200MB to 2GB) until I force the application to quit. I've replicated the problem on two other boxes.

In RH7, I was able to open an unlimited number of topics regardless of whether they contained snippets. The latest release appears to have some sort of memory leak.

Anybody else experience this? Does anybody have a recommended work-around besides not opening more than two topics at a time? If not, what's the best way to provide feedback to Adobe to let them know this is an issue?

Thanks,
Steve

[Captiv8r]

Hi Steve

The way to alert Adobe is using the Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form.

Click here to view the Wish Form/Bug Reporting Form

Cheers... Rick

[SL_Amplify]

Thanks, Rick. I just fired off a bug report. Hopefully, they'll be able to address this; it's been killing my productivity.

[Captiv8r]

Hi again

Out of curiosity, what's in the snippets? I'm thinking that later today I could give it a test to see if I can duplicate the issue. About to head out for a bit but may have some testing time later.

Cheers... Rick

[SL_Amplify]

Mostly text; a few have numbered/bulleted lists.

[niann0rth]

Was there ever a solution to this. I'm starting to expereince similar problems. Open a project, do some find and replace actions and next thing you know the memory usage is up from .5gb to 1.3gb and the whole thing runs really slowly. Restarting the PC appears to be the only way to clear this down but within ten minutes of working we are back to 1.3 gb of memory in use. .3 gb more than the machine has!

[Peter Grainge]

Whilst 1gb is within Adobe's specification, I think it is really too low for any application such as this. I'm curious as to how you are using more memory than the machine has!

First question is do you have the patches applied? If not, try that first.

Then try renaming the CPD file.

After that I would install a trial copy on a more powerful machine and run a copy of the project. If that is what makes it work, then some more memory would be the next step.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[RoboColum_n_]

The first thing to check is that you have both the 8.0.1 and 8.0.2 updates installed. This may solve the problem. You can get them from here.

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• Read the RoboColum(n) for a tips, tricks and musings on the Technical Communication Suite products.
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[niann0rth]

I have both the patches installed.

I have deleted the CPD to see if that makes any difference.I had hoped that RH8 would have solved the issue of CPD problems and I would not end up walking round the office deleteing the CPD on each of the users machines as issues arose.

It is just strange that with the project open it uses 494mb, then after a few minutes working this jumps to 1.3gb. The machine is resorting to virtual memory to run when it gets above 1gb which is why it gets so slow.

We have some major performance issues just openning the projects at the minute, I have a 100mbps connection, a server that is dedicated to RH and nothing else, and dual core 3.2 pcs. It can still take nearly 10 minutes to open a project and on occassion a few minutes to check three topics back in. I'm hoping it is a bottle neck in the comms room as neither the connection, server or PCs are running anywhere near capacity but RH8 still hangs.

I'll let you know if the CPD deletion solves this (until I need to delete it again of course).

[Peter Grainge]

There is an option in RH8 for the CPD to always be recreated on opening the project. Look in Tools > Options.

How many topics in a project?

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[niann0rth]

There are just under 5000 topics at present withabout 60-70 baggage files. I expect that the number of files will increase in time to a to about 7000 in this project.

[niann0rth]

It eventually opened up again and was running at 'normal' memory use, I have been monitoring the mem use and it looks like as topics are opened, worked on and then checked back in the memory used slowly creeps up.

[Peter Grainge]

I have always worked on the basis of limiting projects to your current level but that has been on machines with at least double the memory. I stick with that limit now even on much more powerful machines. If you are going to have more, I really do recommend testing on more powerful machines. Heck, memory is so cheap now is it even worth thinking about. I would say 1gb is going to give you trouble, not just with RH.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[niann0rth]

I agree, and I'll see what can be done aboout getting more RAM but it's a Gov dep and what would on the face of itappear a simple request may prove a 'challenge'.

[niann0rth]

We have ten users running RH5 and working on the live version of the project we are now developing in RH8 and they are not having the same issues with performance so it looks more and more like a RH8 problem.