[ABANDONED] Segger Embedded Studio Hangs on Startup with "Building" in the Title Bar

awneil · Dec 1st 2018, 4:02pm

Same symptoms as this: [SOLVED] Segger Studio frozen on "Building", after failed attempted at GIT

And this: [SOLVED] [BUG?] [workaround] SES v3.30 hangs on startup when source control exe path set incorrectly

But I hadn't done anything to do with Git (or any other) integration. In fact, I hadn't done anything to or with SES at all since it last opened successfully.

I didn't search any further, but it seems that SES is prone to corrupting its settings.xml file and, thus, getting into this unusable state.

As suggested in those threads, deleting the settings.xml file did allow it to start again.

But who knows what useful settings I have now lost?

I had looked for any command line options to get SES to start in a "safe" or "default" state, but didn't find anything - is there anything?

I did notice that there is a 'dumps' folder, and it contained a .dmp file with appropriate date & time - is this of any use to Segger to diagnose the cause of this problem?

SEGGER - Nino · Dec 6th 2018, 3:29pm

Hello,

Thank you for your inquiry.

awneil wrote:

I didn't search any further, but it seems that SES is prone to corrupting its settings.xml file and, thus, getting into this unusable state.

In most cases not ES is the culprit but third party tools and software that can lead to follow up errors in ES which can then corrupt the file.

awneil wrote:

But who knows what useful settings I have now lost?

This is why we suggest to make a backup of that file before deleting it so you can diff potentially important settings back in.

awneil wrote:

I had looked for any command line options to get SES to start in a "safe" or "default" state, but didn't find anything - is there anything?

No such option. The closest to this is the workaround with the settings file. We will discuss internally if a safe mode exe can be implemented which loads a backed up default xml if such cases appear.

awneil wrote:

I did notice that there is a 'dumps' folder, and it contained a .dmp file with appropriate date & time - is this of any use to Segger to diagnose the cause of this problem?

The dmp file gets created and is send with the crash reporter which pops up when critical errors happen. If you send the report the file will be sent as well.
Generally to be able to find the source of such issues we suggest the following steps:
1. Send the Crash Report if prompted + giving details about the situation, why when where it happened.
2. Send us the backed up settings.xml
3. Go to Help->Create Support Report and send that file as well.

Best regards,
Nino

awneil · Dec 7th 2018, 12:02am

SEGGER - Nino wrote:

In most cases not ES is the culprit but third party tools and software

Hmmm ... it's just done it again.

I don't, AFAIK, have any 3rd-party software; I haven't done any VCS integration or anything.

I had left SES in debug mode with the Target running while I switched to other applications.

When I tried to switch back to SES, it would not receive focus. It could not be terminated from the Task Bar - the only way to stop it was from Task Manager.
Having done that, it again hangs at 'Building' if I try to start it.

EDIT

So that I can quickly find it again, the path is: %LOCALAPPDATA%\SEGGER\SEGGER Embedded Studio\v3

awneil · Dec 7th 2018, 5:53pm

And again.

This time, the power failed on the Target during a debug session - and SES just hung.

awneil wrote:

As suggested in those threads, deleting the settings.xml file did allow it to start again.

It seems that is necessary, but not sufficient.

After deleting the settings.xml file, the PC has to be restarted before SES will open.

Deleting the settings.xml file without restarting the PC still leaves SES in the hanging state.

SEGGER - Nino · Dec 12th 2018, 11:24am

Hello,

Please understand that without being able to reproduce the issue we only can guess.
To make things easier could you provide us with the following?

SEGGER - Nino wrote:

Generally to be able to find the source of such issues we suggest the following steps:
1. Send the Crash Report if prompted + giving details about the situation, why when where it happened.
2. Send us the backed up settings.xml
3. Go to Help->Create Support Report and send that file as well.

Best regards,
Nino

awneil · Dec 18th 2018, 6:19pm

SEGGER - Nino wrote:

Send the Crash Report if prompted

There was no prompt: SES was just hanging - not crashing.

It looks like the hang was due to problems with the JLink (or its USB connection) - with SES in the Hung state, pulling the JLink USB connection allowed it to close.

I had been using the JLink via a hub; seeing that pulling the USB released the Hang, I've stopped using the hub - and haven't had these problems since...

SEGGER - Nino · Dec 19th 2018, 2:00pm

Hello,

Thank you for the update.
So the freeze/crash most likely happens due to a bad PC to debug probe connection.
We have seen numerous USB-hubs that do not fulfill USB specs properly over the years even from "famous" manufacturers.
So our suggestion is generally to have it plugged directly into the PC or have different hubs for testing from different manufacturers where possible.

If connection to the J-Link software on the PC and thus to ES breaks e.g. during debug or after building during license check unpredictable issues can appear that can't all be caught necessarily by software due to the physical interference here.
We will check if our error handling can be improved in such cases.

EDIT: Could you name your exact USB hub make so we can try to reproduce the error? Are you using the original USB cable shipped with J-Link or a third party one?

Best regards,
Nino

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