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So, an application I wrote about seven years ago has been acting up of late - some days yes, some days no, even though it's not been updated for a couple of years. This is all running on XPSP3 VMWare View Client.
So, I went and loaded appropriate compiler on my TC (Thin Client) image (VS 2008) and rebuilt the app - upgrading from .NET 1.1 to 3.5 along the way. This was a proper update, not the /clr:oldstyle flag.
And it works on my machine. On a regular TC session, however, it crashes on load w/kernel32.dll error.
So - It works on my box, where I can diagnose it, but there, it's not broken;
Flail my arms and hope for the best - but I feel myself doomed to lose this one.
Grunt.
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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W∴ Balboos wrote: Flail my arms and hope for the best - but I feel myself doomed to lose this one.
Welcome to development. Oh, and you need to have it fixed by yesterday.
Jeremy Falcon
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Ah the life of a developer. 
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It's Friday. Go home. You'll have the answer by Monday morning.
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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I've felt this pain before - rarely - but I know the outcome;
Current fall-back position: recreate from original C++ to HTML/php/javascript.
Sigh;
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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You think that's bad?
How about a random hard crash in legacy software that happens every Monday (Sometimes other days of the week, but usually just Mondays) on a random selection of 1-4 of about 20 user desktops. It somehow fixes itself sometime in the early afternoon (So we can't debug it after hours when the machines aren't in use), never hits a developer machine, and is (temporarily) fixed by releasing an update to the software (Even if nothing was actually changed).
So yeah... Bugs suck.
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Ian Shlasko wrote: in legacy software
But at least you can blame it on others, right?
You'll never get very far if all you do is follow instructions.
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Yeah - bugs suck. This is just sighing to the crowd how this one's likely to be unfixable.
As a sort of take-off on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principal, to examine the system I need to perturb it, and perturbing it causes such a change as to make my changes useless in the unperturbed system;
It's happened to others.
Ian Shlasko wrote: that happens every Monday
Sounds like system maintenance needs to be considered. Had one of those here once. I wrote an application to monitor file size on the SQL Server every ten minutes and plotted as graph: the weekend maintenance cycle was crashing the system. Changing the order of the services (freeing space before requesting some) and it's never happened again. You may wish to look into triggering such a cycle (next time) so you can check after-hours. The not-happening-on-dev-box problem is where I am now.
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Yep, that's a Heisenbug[^].
W∴ Balboos wrote: Sounds like system maintenance needs to be considered.
Yeah, I've been back and forth with our network admins, system admins, support guys... Been looking into it on-and-off for months. Fortunately, the Heisenbug doesn't affect my new systems, so just replacing them as soon as I can.
But I feel your pain, man... The worst bugs are the ones you can't reproduce... Like the opposite of nature, where the best bugs (From my perspective) are the ones that don't reproduce 
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kmoorevs wrote: Although it's a victory, it's impossible to make the customer understand that another software vendor is responsible for causing your program to misbehave
One of many reasons I like .NET... Nothing in the registry, nothing in system32... Other than the framework itself, my entire software suite is sitting in one directory.
Plus a few directories on the network with configuration files, resources, etc... But nothing local!
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I always keep this[^] handy.
/ravi
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W∴ Balboos wrote: .NET
There is your bug right there.
I have written MFC apps so many years ago I was still young, and didnt have a mortgage, that stil run today.
If it works, dont fix/break it.
(And I still use MFC for all my user mode code. (I am a kernel guy))
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A friend of a friend wrote software that was deployed at a company near the beach which also happened to have a very big horse race every year. He injected a bug to trigger every year just before the weekend of the big horse race. So every year he had an all expenses paid trip to the races to 'fix' the bug. Just goes to show - bugs come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and they can be really useful too! 
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WendyS56 wrote: He injected a bug to trigger
This, by the way, is why I am against electronic voting. Not only inject the bug, but have it only work during specific times of day (on voting day) and then remove itself from the application;
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Sitting in a 24' travel trailer at the mo-mo's (mother-in-law's) working remotely with my laptop.
The trailer is upgrade from previous years model - a mid '70s vintage Scotty travel trailer.
I enjoy the abilty to work remotely when needed.
Tim
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I know it sounds silly, but give me something like that... bring my sailboat close to the ocean, and I'll be happy to work remotely.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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NOT!
Unless you count listening to classical music while sitting at home sending out invoices for July's work, having lunch with the gf in a couple hours, working on the Beaglebone - bill acceptor interface some more and taking a walk later at High Falls[^].
Marc
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Marc Clifton wrote: Unless you count listening to classical music
And by classical you mean heavy metal right?
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: And by classical you mean heavy metal right?
Absolutely. All those metal violin and cello strings must be rather heavy, not to mention the brass horn section and silver plated nickel or brass flutes. 
Marc
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Heavy metal pffffffft.[^]
It ain't heavy unless the noisy physically rattles you.
Alberto Brandolini: The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
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I'm at the office. Now what?
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Go home.
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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Can I quote you to my boss? Sir, this man on the internet told me to "Go home" see you Monday
Every day, thousands of innocent plants are killed by vegetarians.
Help end the violence EAT BACON
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