Troubleshooting - crashes & bugs – ETC Cobalt Family v7.0.0 User Manual

Page 69

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Troubleshooting - Crashes & Bugs

All software-based products run the risk of a crash regardless of testing
procedures. In the unlikely event it happens, please help us to eliminate
problems with crashes and bugs by reporting them to us.

NOTE: This has to be done directly. The dmp file is a temporary file that will
be overwritten if anything happens later. BOTH files are needed to solve the
problem. Thank you for your help.

To make it easier and faster to solve problems with the Cobalt software, it is important that problems
are reported in a proper and complete way.

First, it is important to define what a Crash means. To a developer, a crash means that the application
crashes with some kind of error message. Most crashes can be intercepted to make it possible to save
play data and to present a proper crash message. These are known as "handled crashes". Handled
crashes produce an error message and also produce what is known as a "Dump file" containing
important information about the console state when the crash occurred. In addition, a "Recovery File"
is produced and is offered on a restart so that you can recover any data you programmed but had not
saved before the crash.

If the application hangs or misbehaves, this is not regarded as a crash (it may still be a serious problem
however).

• If the application seems to hang, please check the following things:

• Was the hour glass constantly on in the upper corner? If so, this is a real hang-up. The system

should only be in this state for 30 seconds before a log file is created. Please follow the
directions above to send the log file to us.

• Does anything work? Mouse, keyboard, some buttons etc? If an external keyboard is

connected, is anything pressing down a key like a script or a headset?

• Was it possible to press ESC to unlock this state? (It is possible, in some very special

situations, that a key could be "forgotten" in the down state, which blocks other keys. ESC
should always fix this.)

• Does it say "Keyboard override" in the upper right corner? If so, there is probably a text cell

open for editing somewhere on screen.

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