upgraded yesterday, crashed today, quite damaging

[Josh L]

Haven't had instability problems with Agent in years. Just lost more
than an hour of work (had grown accustomed to Agent stability, so I
wasn't saving frequently) in an email.

Joy.

Was doing the final spell-check before sending off. It saved a
crash-dump for me. Unreadable. Did it bother to save the email
itself for me somewhere? I can't tell from the crash-dump file, it is
unreadable. If they want me to go through all that crash-dump nonsense
and send them an email, maybe they could bother to save the actual
work that I lost? In some readable form?

I don't think I'll send off the crash-dump file, which appears to have
some info in it that is part of my confidential aspects of email.

If anyone knows of an easy way to get my work out of the crash-dump
file, if it is there, that would be great.

Josh

[Josh L]

On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:26:07 -0500, Arno Martens
<sne...@sympatico.ca> wrote:

>>I don't think I'll send off the crash-dump file, which appears to have
>>some info in it that is part of my confidential aspects of email.
>

>That is brilliant. Don't send the crash dump.
>They might find what caused it,
>change the programme
>and you won't be able to enjoy crashes any longer.

Thanks. Maybe you're right. My thought was that maybe they could
find out what is causing this without my particular crash-dump. Maybe
others are seeing this as well and the crash-dump they might send
won't have sensitive business data in it. When I looked at the dump,
it looked like it had a lot of extraneous information.

My inclination is always to err on the side of guarding against
sending out information that might amount to a violation of a business
agreement. I'll look at it later.

I can report that the crash occurred during the spell-check. I don't
recall if I downloaded and loaded the new dictionaries.

I would be curious if others have experienced crashes as part of this
new upgrade.

>>If anyone knows of an easy way to get my work out of the crash-dump
>>file, if it is there, that would be great.

Again:

If they are going to build these crash-dump files, maybe they could
build them in a way that actually saves our work as well as what they
think they need to diagnose the matter?

Josh

[Cindy Ross]

I don't have a solution for you, but ever since working in a lightning
prone location, I am in the habit of, no matter what app I may be
working in, saving after every few lines or so. In many apps, including
Agent, that just means pressing ctrl-s frequently...

[Josh L]

Thanks, I'll try this shortcut. I have gotten in the habit of saving
drafts in Agent, though not as frequently as you. An issue seems to
be that when I save (whether using the shortcut or manually) it
minimizes the draft to the Drafts folder and I have to go open it
again to resume work.

Side-note: if you get a laptop with a decent battery (next time
maybe?), you could unplug during times of frequent lightning and
continue working. I guess also you could get stronger UPS equipment,
but probably you've thought of all that.

jl

On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:48:54 -0500, Cindy Ross <ro...@us.ibm.com>
wrote:

[Jaimie Vandenbergh]

On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:50:26 -0700, Josh L <jos...@mail.com> wrote:

>
>Thanks, I'll try this shortcut. I have gotten in the habit of saving
>drafts in Agent, though not as frequently as you. An issue seems to
>be that when I save (whether using the shortcut or manually) it
>minimizes the draft to the Drafts folder and I have to go open it
>again to resume work.

That's an option you can disable, in
Tools/Options/Posting Messages/Composition Window/Saving a draft
message also closes the composition window.

Cheers - Jaimie
--
A Jesus of mass J travelling at a speed of 27 meters/second collides with a
stationary Moses of mass M. Assuming any elastic deformation is lossless and
perfectly reversible, calculate how long it will be until the next Passover.
-- Tanuki, asr

[Carroll Robbins]

Josh L <jos...@mail.com> wrote on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:50:26 -0700 in
<15gdi511usv9f46gn...@4ax.com>

>An issue seems to
>be that when I save (whether using the shortcut or manually) it
>minimizes the draft to the Drafts folder and I have to go open it
>again to resume work.

This is an option at "Tools -> Options -> Posting Messages -> Composition
Window -> Saving a draft message also closes the composition window".
--
Carroll B. Robbins, Jr.

[Josh L]

Thanks, very helpful, have just done this. Good .sig quote.

[Josh L]

Thanks as commented to Jamie, very helpful to get this tip.

jl

[Cindy Ross]

>Thanks, I'll try this shortcut. I have gotten in the habit of saving
>drafts in Agent, though not as frequently as you. An issue seems to
>be that when I save (whether using the shortcut or manually) it
>minimizes the draft to the Drafts folder and I have to go open it
>again to resume work.

This really puzzled me, why it does this for when it doesn't for me,
forget there was an option, but Jaimie and Carroll were on top of it.

>Side-note: if you get a laptop with a decent battery (next time
>maybe?), you could unplug during times of frequent lightning and
>continue working. I guess also you could get stronger UPS equipment,
>but probably you've thought of all that.

Sure. Saving so frequently is just a long-time habit for me, from when
I used to work in a lightning prone area. I won't say exactly how many
years ago, but suffice to say there were no laptops or UPS's around the
typical small office back then. :-)

[Josh L]

I have had one more crash since this happened. It happened a week or
two ago. I was not thinking quickly enough and out of force-of-habit
I once again turned down the chance to send my data to Agent.

I did notice that it seemed to happen (if my fallible recollection
serves) at an odd time during a lengthy email composition session. It
seemed to coincide with my doing something with the
persona/from/Signature area and then getting a question about "update
settings for new something" (not all legible because I keep my fonts
very large I guess). I'm not sure I've seen that before (I seldom
fiddle with any of the persona/from/Signature settings.... but once in
a very great while).

It is not 100% certain that the crash coincided exactly with that
activity or that update message. So, if it happens again, I will try
to overcome force-of-habit and email Forte the data. In the meantime,
I have been saving a lot more often... it's probably been 7-8 years
since I had any really clear instability issues with Agent, so it's a
somewhat unique issue to try to change some habits (saving drafts,
sending crash data) in using it. I can live with a crash once per
month, I guess, if I am sure that I am saving lengthy email
composition sessions frequently enough.

Josh