Re: Octave 5.1 and 5.2 crashing on Windows 10

[Torsten Lilge]

On Fri, 2020-02-28 at 21:51 +0000, John Frain wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 28 Feb 2020 at 03:28, Kai Torben Ohlhus <address@hidden>
> wrote:
> > On 2/28/20 7:19 AM, John Frain wrote:
> > > Has any other user detected the following problem or perhaps know
> > of a
> > > solution?   
> > > 
> > > I am running Windows 10 1909 64-bit.
> > > 
> > > I have been using Octave in Windows (and Linux) for many years
> > with
> > > great success.  When I tried to start octave 5.1 using the a white
> > > screen appeared with the octave icon and the word octave on the
> > top
> > > left-hand corner of the screen and it crashed immediately. the cli
> > > version continued to work.  
> > > 
> > > I decided to update to 5.2 and downloaded
> > > octave-5.2.0_1-w64-installer.exe and installed. When the install
> > was
> > > finished the readme was displayed but the gui version of octave
> > did not
> > > start or had crashed before I closed the readme file. The
> > cli version of
> > > octave worked as expected
> > > 
> > > I have since installed today's windows update - previous updates
> > had
> > > been installed.  I have uninstalled both versions of octave and
> > > reinstalled 5.2.  (5.2 several times).
> > > 
> > > There are a lot of applications on this PC e.g. R, Rstudio,
> > Maxima,
> > > Libre Office, Gretl, Texstudio, Tex-Live, Anaconda,  etc. etc. 
> > All of
> > > these work perfectly.  Any of the versions of the octave program
> > when
> > > run in a console window with or without gui or force-gui options
> > default
> > > to the cli version.  Emacs octave mode works fine.
> > > 
> > > The windows event viewer gives the following error message.  It is
> > > strange that octave alone picks out the problem with the
> > dntdll.dll file.
> > > 
> > > Faulting application name: octave-gui.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time
> > stamp:
> > > 0x00000000
> > > Faulting module name: ntdll.dll, version: 10.0.18362.657, time
> > stamp:
> > > 0x64d10ee0
> > > Exception code: 0xc0000374
> > > Fault offset: 0x00000000000f92a9
> > > Faulting process id: 0x22ac
> > > Faulting application start time: 0x01d5ed84236f5f57
> > > Faulting application path:
> > C:\Octave\OCTAVE~2.0\mingw64\bin\octave-gui.exe
> > > Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\ntdll.dll
> > > Report Id: 4f945789-a789-4d34-8dc9-45ec135e357e
> > > Faulting package full name:
> > > Faulting package-relative application ID: 
> > > 
> > > John C Frain, Ph.D.
> > > 
> > > Economics Department             3 Aranleigh Park
> > > Trinity College Dublin                 Rathfarnham
> > > College Green                           Dublin 14
> > > Dublin 2                                    Ireland
> > > Ireland
> > > www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/frainj/home.htm
> > > <http://www.tcd.ie/Economics/staff/frainj/home.htm>
> > > mailto:address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden>
> > > mailto:address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden>
> > > 
> > > 
> > 
> > Did you use Octave 5.1 GUI until that day when you saw a white
> > screen
> > only?  Or did you use an older version of Octave before?
> > 
> > 
> 
> I think that Octave 5.1 was running on the PC some weeks ago.  
> I have again uninstalled Octave, deleted the folder and reinstalled
> Octave. but this does not solve the problem. 
> If I delete the folder and start the desktop octave icon I get 
>    1. the welcome to octave screen,
>    2. The Community News screen
>    3 The Enjoy screen,
> Next, a plain white screen in the upper left-hand corner of the screen
> which vanishes very quickly and octave does not now start.
> 
> I have in the last few minutes tried to start Octave gui from the
> desktop icon about 20 times.  On two occasions the gui appeared and
> almost immediately crashed.  On the remaining occasions, just the
> blank screen appeared with a suggestion of a flicker on a few
> occasions.  Is it possible that the gui is starting and closing before
> it can be read on the screen?
> 
> I have run dism and SFC/scannow to check system files and no corrupt
> system files were found.
> 
> I have installed Scite 4.3.0 (scintilla based editor) and it runs ok.
> 
>  I suspect that either the Windows 10 update to 1909 or some other
> update that I have installed may have caused some kind of conflict. It
> would be interesting to hear if other users of windows 10 1909 with
> current updates have or have not encountered problems.
>  
> > An often occurring problem are stale config files, when having
> > installed
> > older versions of Octave on the same MS Windows system before.
> > 
> > Did you try to remove the folder
> > 
> >    C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\.config\octave
> > 
> > before starting Octave?
> > 
> > HTH,
> > Kai

When you see the welcome screen, the old config files where definitely
removed. Do you have some special commands in .octaverc?

Torsten