EPrime Issues with New Computer

[hannah...@gmail.com]

Hi all,

We have recently run into an issue with running an EPrime task (EPrime 3) on a new computer setup. This task runs smoothly on our original computer setup, however we are having issues running it on the new computer. The main issue we are having is that the computer freezes during the practice trials and the computer will not proceed without a hard restart. The program also starts really slowly on the new computer, with a bunch of screen flashing that doesn’t happen when we run it on a different computer. Does anyone have any ideas about why we are having these issues with our new setup?

Thanks so much!

Hannah

[Spape, Michiel]

Hi,

Well, it’s a cheap shot, but have you tried running it at the monitor’s native resolution? The screen flashing suggests a bunch of resolution changes, and some monitors really don’t like to run in some of the defaults (e.g. 1024 x 768 – good old fashioned CRT style). Somewhat associated is the problem that Windows HiDPI is a mess as everything ‘modern’ can adapt quite well, but older software like E-Prime (and things like Windows Explorer) adapt pretty poorly. Go to Start, search for ‘scaling’ (you get something like ‘make everything bigger’), and see if turning that off (to 100%) and instead going to Start > resolution and running the monitor in something like 1680 x 1050 fixes things (if you have a HiDIPI monitor it will show something much higher). I find my Surface Pro 4, for example, runs E-Prime quite slowly, often messing up the icons to various sizes, and experiments don’t go so well if I don’t run at a lower resolution than its insanely high native.

 

Hope that helps!

Best,

Michiel

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[hannah...@gmail.com]

Thank you so much for this suggestion! Unfortunately we are still having trouble running this task, and now think it may be related to using Windows 10. We recently were forced to upgrade our Windows system from 7 to 10, and only started experiencing these issues after the upgrade. While it appears to run properly in test sessions without a participant, once we run it with a participant (who is also hooked up to psychophys sensors), the task starts to freeze and doesn't work. Has anyone had a similar issue with Windows 10 or have any ideas on what we can try to fix this issue? 

Thanks so much!

Hannah

[David McFarlane]

Hannah,

I have a saying: "Better to start from success than from failure". In
this case I would start with a simple "hello world" program on the new
computer, nothing more than a single TextDisplay that displays a message
for a short time to see if that worked. I would then work up from
there, perhaps recreating the existing experiment program until I found
what makes the program break.

Alternatively, I might go in the other direction -- remove things from a
copy of the broken program until I removed the part that makes it break.
Generally, though, I find this approach less fertile.

You will recognize both of these as variants of the venerable "divide
and conquer" troubleshooting strategy. Unfortunately, this sort of
troubleshooting will be very hard to do if the problem occurs only
during participant sessions instead of during debugging runs.

We have indeed had some E-Prime experiments break when moved from
Windows 7 to 10, typically due to Win10 dropping support for some low
resolutions and color bit-depths. But I think in these cases we always
got an error message instead of a computer freeze.

Finally, from time to time we have had problems that occurred on only
one out of multiple identical machines and never could track down the
cause. In those cases, we simply ended up replacing the rogue computers.

-- David McFarlane

>> *From:* e-p...@googlegroups.com <e-p...@googlegroups.com> *On Behalf Of *
>> hannah...@gmail.com
>> *Sent:* 26 January 2021 15:43
>> *To:* E-Prime <e-p...@googlegroups.com>
>> *Subject:* EPrime Issues with New Computer

[Chris Kincak]

Hi Hannah,

I hope I'm not too late to this thread to be of some assistance. Since you are describing freezing on Windows 10 "during the practice trials", I'd note it makes a massive difference if you mean freezing on the very first visual E-Object on your experiment, or if you are able to get to the second. If the former is the case, there are these known issues: ERROR: Experiments run on Windows 10 (1903 & 1909) freeze or receive a display is too busy error (Error 11102) [30679] and ERROR: Multiple monitor experiments run on Windows 10 (2004 & 20H2) freeze or receive a display is too busy error (Error 11102) [35180]. You can check your version of Windows by searching the Start Menu for the "winver" run command.

I agree with David's approach, you can always use a sample experiment like BasicRT to establish a baseline for your ability to run E-Prime in general on a given setup. If you replicate this issue with BasicRT that suggests a wider issue with the setup. This could be related to the OS-specific issues mentioned above, your hardware, or possibly an incomplete installation, especially if the machine meets the minimum requirements:  GETTING STARTED: E-Prime Machine Requirements [22669] . Transitioning from Windows 7 to 10 is one factor, but you're of course also on an entirely new machine so there are some potentially confounding factors at play here. I would refer to INFO: Upgrading from Windows 7 or earlier to Windows 10 [34475], but also: ERROR: G-Sync and FreeSync may cause freezing and runtime errors [37035] and ERROR: Some chipsets may have incompatibility with E-Prime Suite [35879].

Related to being able to run test sessions, are you solely running in Windowed Mode perchance? If so, that is worth noting and I would expect you'd find the same ability to run BasicRT in Windowed Mode but not regularly/non-Windowed.

If you can replicate with BasicRT despite meeting the minimum machine requirements, please reach out to my colleagues and myself in PST Support at https://support.pstnet.com/hc/en-us, see: INFO: How to submit a support request and check the request's status [28276] and INFO: How to Register for Support and Access Downloads [27523]. Regardless of your Support status, this issue would then fall under the complimentary Support umbrella of installation, version compatibility, licensing and/or PST hardware. Anyone whose machine meets the requirements but cannot run a sample experiment is encouraged to reach out to PST Support.

-Chris Kincak
Technical Consultant II at PST
Independent Contractor for Experiment Development/other projects beyond INFO: Scope of PST Support [34403]