Problems saving gpx files in Vista

[LDWhite68]

Normally I (happily) run TopoFusion in XP. But with the demise of my work laptop a few days ago, I'm having to deal more with the Vista laptop at home. Unfortunately, TF has a bad habit of freezing up on it:
1) If I try to create a new gpx route using the pencil tool, it gets stuck when I try to save the New File. Surprisingly, the gpx file is actually there when I start the program back up.
2) The same behavior occurs if I try to do "Save all files". Actually, it does this any time that I try to save a gpx file, even on exiting the program. Unlike in case (1) though, any changes are lost when I restart.

This is really frustrating and debilitating. I suspect most of the blame must be on how Vista is configured on the laptop...

Incidentally, I don't see any documentation of what "Save all files" actually does. Obviously, it saves the gpx files; but does it also save calibration info for User Maps? There needs to be some way to manually save the calibrations, since all my calibration work has been lost several times when the program crashed.

Loren

[ScottMorris]

Hmm, this is the first I've heard of any problems saving out files, in any operating system.  Many users run Vista without issue.

In case (1) do you mean the GPX file exists, or does it also get loaded the next time you start up TF?  The only way it could load up is if TF closed cleanly so the .ini file gets written out with the newly drawn/saved file listed in the 'to be loaded' section.

Unfortunately the only way to save out calibration info is to close the program.  I aim to change the way calibration info is stored (perhaps in a file in the same dir as the image), making it easy to save out calibration info as the calibration is made.

In both cases 1) and 2), is TF crashing and giving an error, or does it just hang and you end up killing it?

[LDWhite68]

In case 1, the file is actually loaded properly on startup. There are no error messages at all. The program just becomes nonresponsive.

In case 2 though, the previously existing file is in the same condition as it was on the previous start, loaded but unmodified.

I don't have any experience running Vista on other systems, but at least on this one the file management behaves pretty strange. For example, there's an empty folder called "My Documents" (separate from "Documents") that "is not accessible". But things normally work OK within "Documents".

Loren

[ScottMorris]

I'm not sure exactly how to approach this one.  It's worth a look in the TF diagnostic file (there's a link to it in the TF start menu group).  If you could email me that file or paste it here that might shed some light.

Otherwise I will see if I can find/fabricate a Vista64 system to see if I can do some testing.  Or I'll keep thinking, too.

[jocoyn]

I don't know whether it helps or not but EVERYTHING got better when I updated my graphics drivers. I was having freezes, jerky motion, all kinds of little problems and it made a world of difference.  I have Vista 64 home premium with a dedicated graphics card. My computer is new as of 8/21 but driver updated 8/27 and I updated a few days ago and got put on their notify list.

[ScottMorris]

Glad to hear things are working better for you.  Might be something similar happening here.  There are definitely other users on Vista 64 that have no issues.

[LDWhite68]

I updated the graphics driver, but it didn't make any difference. I don't need to re-install TF after updating the graphics driver, do I? I'll try to attach the diagnostic file for you. By the way, the laptop is a Compaq Presario CQ50-110US.

[LDWhite68]

Hey, I decided to revisit this issue tonight. On a hunch, I think I at least partially figured it out. I noticed in Task Manager that Topofusion was taking a huge amount of memory (something like 800 MB). I decided to see what would happen if I unloaded all files. Memory usage went down to a much more reasonable 170 MB or so. And when I tried saving a few points as a .gpx file, it didn't self-destruct anymore!  It still seems a bit strange that simply creating a tiny file can cause such disaster when lots of stuff is loaded (especially since other programs are not prevented from saving at the same time), but at least now it's clear that the problem is related to memory resources.

[ScottMorris]

Wow, you must have had some very large files loaded to take 800MB!  Mine gets close to that when I load every piece of GPX data I have...

It still seems strange that it would be the cause of your saving trouble.  Not a bad idea to clear out the open files every once in a while -- if nothing else TF will start up faster!

Let me know what you find -- if the problem resurfaces or not...