PR# 12902 WEL_ERROR Dialog on starting debugger

I had been working for some time in the same EiffelStudio window, debugging etc.

On returning from the debugger, I heard a worrying noise that I'd heard in the past when EiffelStudio was running out of some kind of resource. I hadn't heard this for a month or more.

I did some editing and then hit F5. I heard the noise again, and this time there was an information dialog titled "WEL_ERROR Dialog", with the message, "Not enough storage is available to complete this operation. GetLastError returned 14".

The message is wrong. This computer has 17.5 GB free.

Process Explorer says that it is using only 898 MB, and CPU usage is about 30%. The computer is perfectly responsive.

The taskbar has six EiffelStudio icons with no caption, plus an icon for the information dialog, plus the normal icon: eight in total.

I clicked the dialog's OK button. A couple of more beeps ensued, and CPU usage rose to 100% for about thirty seconds before dropping back to normal. Five more captionless EiffelStudio icons appeared in the taskbar. EiffelStudio was entirely grey, except for the toolbar and status bar. The little green animated debugger arrow was moving at the bottom right. My application was running normally. It even broke into EiffelStudio when an exception occurred in my application, although EiffelStudio didn't display anything; and when I hit F5 my application resumed.

I exited my application and there were a couple of beeps, and then the normal EiffelStudio display returned. Only six captionless icons remained in the taskbar.

I hit Ctrl+Tab and it got very upset, beeping repeatedly. It sounds like some sort of avant-garde piano composition, getting slower and slower. CPU is at 100%, although the computer remains responsive.

I had to force quit EiffelStudio.

Closing since we do not seem to have that problem anymore.

I don't recall having had this problem in 6.1 or 6.2. Maybe it's been fixed.

Hi, Peter,

In the desktop heap table you provided in last bug report interaction, it seems your desktop heap memory is enough indeed while this error happening. Now, I guess maybe there are GDI object leaks after using Eiffel Studio for a long time. Next time, if this bug happens, could you have a look at the Eiffel Studio GDI objects number? (In Windows task manager-> process tab-> view menu-> choose column->select “GDI Objects”. Then there is a column named “GDI Objects” in process tab’s table) Thanks in advance. Your help is appreciated.

Have you meet this problem again in recent versions of Eiffel Studio? For me, I never meet this problem in all release of Eiffel Studio 6.1 and 6.2…

It's just happened again in 6.0.6.8996. I heard a few beeps after I hit F5 to compile and debug, but it didn't even save my changes, let along compile.

Then the same WEL error dialog appeared with GetLastError 14. This is the first time I've seen the dialog since I originally reported this problem.

To monitor the desktop heap, I installed the utility recommended by the link you sent me a week or two ago. Here's the output produced while the WEL error dialog was still open:

$  \WINDOWS\system32\kktools\dheapmon.exe
Desktop Heap Information Monitor Tool (Version 8.1.2925.0)
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.
-------------------------------------------------------------
  Session ID:    0 Total Desktop: (  6336 KB -    7 desktops)

  WinStation\Desktop            Heap Size(KB)    Used Rate(%)
-------------------------------------------------------------
  WinSta0\Default                    4096             53.9
  WinSta0\Disconnect                   64              4.5

....
Output truncated, Click download to get the full message

Yes, Larry, I did that a couple of months ago when someone (possibly you) alerted me to it, and the problems that I had been having up until then went away, until these similar problems started.

Maybe I need to increase it to something larger than 4096.

Have you changed the Windows desktop heap limitations values on your Windows XP 32bits platform? See http://eiffelsoftware.origo.ethz.ch/index.php/Desktop_Heap_Limitations

I've never seen such a behavior of EiffelStudio. If you can see how to reproduce the problem it would be great.

I've had similar symptoms twice since reporting this, although the circumstances differ.

One is happening right now. I edited a class and hit F5. It did not save, it did not build, and it did not run. I tried to open the Project menu to see what was going on, but none of the menus opened. Eventually, after switching to other applications, I did manage to get them to open, but the File | Save menu item was disabled. I could not save my change, so I hit Alt+F4. Then I heard a beep, and the task bar showed an extra captionless icon. Then many, continuous beeps ensued. Two more captionless icons appeared in the task bar. In Process Explorer, I can see that ec.exe is using about 1,720 GDI Objects and various files are opening and closing in my Temp directory. There is only one thread.

I had to kill ec.exe.