New install / debugging help

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Drstein99

Junior Contributor
Joined
Sep 26, 2003
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Audubon, Nj
I've been writing an application for about 8 months now and installing on new computer for first time.

I made the deployment setup as the help files explain. The computer can successfully run small little applications i've build, has all framework and mdac loaded (because it runs small crystal report applications that attach to mySQL using odbc)


When i double-click the .exe the application runs, i get an hour glass and it sit in stasis. i have to end the task to get the computer to do anything else (like run uninstall from control panel)


Is there a .log or something i can check, or any type of degug thing here I can go troubleshoot this miserable thing?

I've re/created the setup application, re/created the solution from scratch added the project. With same failure results.
 
When I add a new setup wizard to the solution I get this dialog at the end:

"The following files may have dependencies that cannot be determined automatically. Please confirm that all dependencies have been added to the project."

(lists a bunch of .ocx and .dll's)


Now what must i do? I see that the dependency files are in the list.
 
Ok, i removed bitmaps, and animating bitmaps. The whole application runs much faster.

This disappoints me. In visual basic 6 these same procedures I'm doing now in .net on the same machine would run much faster and more efficiently.

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The following are opinionated thoughts:
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The .net framework definately puts a burden to cpu processing time and memory. It is obviosly geared towards newer and powerful machines. Everyone must understand that when developing applications for older machines in companies where you may be hired to replace antique softare but replacing hardware on hundreds of workstations is out of the question.

It's also a huge disappointment to not be able to make a quick small .exe and send it to someone over email or i/m transfer without having to go through the ropes of installing .net framework and all the necessary windows updates on their machine.
 
OCX files and COM dlls will be slower to access than native .Net components anyway - if these are 3rd party components then it may be worth seeing if there is a .Net replacement. Also .Net components do not need to be registered on the remote computer so deployment is easier.
As to deployment being easier - originally the same complaints were levelled agains VB6 (and 5 and 4 and 3 etc) as they also needed large (for the time) runtime libraries to be deployed. With .Net things will get better 2003 and future versions will include the framework as will XP SP2.

As to performance - without seeing the code / knowing the size, colour depth etc of the bitmaps it is hard to know were performance issues occur. Are you doing a release build of your application rather than a debug build for shipping to customers? Also what OS / Hardware specs is the application being run on? Is it a particular routine that is slow or just overall?
 
PlausiblyDamp said:
As to performance - without seeing the code / knowing the size, colour depth etc of the bitmaps it is hard to know were performance issues occur. Are you doing a release build of your application rather than a debug build for shipping to customers? Also what OS / Hardware specs is the application being run on? Is it a particular routine that is slow or just overall?
Click to expand...


I just put a few animating bitmaps on the form to dress it up nice, as I spent some time in art school and feel the visual appearance of applications helps users to relate and feel more comforatble, then a plain business black white grey button interface form which makes many feel like their "at work" instead of trying to enjoy their time. It's something I feel strong about.

I have done a release build to the application, and verified that.

The client machine is a windows 98 350 mhz with 128 meg of RAM. My application uses odbc to read and write using mySQL. Throughout the course of the program it will access memory etc... communicate through a custom .dll for some winsock tcp/ip communications to communications server machine. Overall, I'm just processing data input. no heavy database access and processing. I'm porting an application over from a straight up text environment, and wrote these same routines in a DOS foxpro environment.

It brings up forms, u type in data, and at the end of the dialog it writes the results back. If you were to imagine all the process involved: Its an application to capture data for a questionaiire. Some questionaiires are long and some are short. Questions are pulled from mySQL server, and the answers are written back to mySQL. Different dialog popups appear. It's a simple business application. There are timers involved, I'm timeing the operators in the length of the questions, and different states that the whole application runs etc, for stat analysis.

I'm clicking buttons, and it's sluggish, and latent. Also feels like the hard drive is scrambling for virtual memory sometimes, which scares me. When the application loads, there is a huge amount of time to wait so long I feel i need to write a splash screen - which i HATE DOING.

The development machine, which is a loaded xp workstataion has no problems whatsoever in response time and there isnt a hit of any lag at all.
 
Do the animated bitmaps use transparency at all? I seem to remember reading somewhere about how several of the video drivers that shipped with win98 either not handling transparency (and alpha blending) either properly or at all - have you tried updating the video drivers just to see?
Also have you done any profilling of the app to see where the performance issues are - could be memory if you are getting lots of disc access but where is the memory being allocated?
It may be worth running the app and monitoring it with Performance monitor / task manager to see what kind of memory load etc it is using (or alternatively have a look here for a nice free tool).
 
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