Does the Viewer DLL Get Corrupted Somehow?

[johnr@etakeoff.com]

We're seeing behavior that I want to report in case others are seeing it.

Sometimes our application crashes while opening a file withe the viewer library. Usually this is because the PDF file is corrupt. But somtimes we find that the file is fine. The problem goes away if the system is rebooted.

My theory is that the DLL is getting corrupted internally. When the system is rebooted, a fresh copy is loaded and the corruption is gone.

Of course, this is just a guess. But I wnder if anyone else has seen the same thing?

[Vasyl-Tracker Dev Team]

Hi, John.

Sometimes our application crashes while opening a file withe the viewer library. Usually this is because the PDF file is corrupt. But somtimes we find that the file is fine.

1. Which SDK do you use exactly: Viewer Simple SDK or Viewer ActiveX SDK?

2. Our SDK shouldn't crash while opening any pdf even if the input pdf is corrupted. If you detected that our SDK crashes on some documents - please send us some of these documents for investigating and fixing the problem.

Note: if you are talking about our Viewer ActiveX SDK then any method of the ActiveX control can return a standard error code in the standard COM way, via HRESULT. But some client applications (.net, vb6 etc.) generate exceptions automatically when receiving the "normal" COM-error code (thanks to Microsoft ). In this case, to skip an exception message, you must use a special try{}catch{} brackets (see our SDK-Examples).
3. You could also send us a simple example application for reproducing the problem, and if you can provide "step-by-step" instructions as well - those would be very helpful. Thanks.

Please ensure you do not include any license info in your examples and zip all uploads or they will not attach.

Best
Regards.

[johnr@etakeoff.com]

We're seeing this on the viewer SDK. I'll have our support staff grab the file on the next example.

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello John R,

Vasyl asked for some more details as we do have two different Viewer SDKs - a simple dll one and the ActiveX one.
Please try to provide a more detailed sample ideally with steps how to reproduce the problem, and with a stripped down source which we could compile on our end to try and reproduce the issue.

Also please ensure that your keys are not visible in the code or we will have to deactivate them.

Best,
Stefan

[johnr@etakeoff.com]

We are using the simple viewer DLL, not the ActiveX.

Recreating this is nearly impossible. It happens on a customer's system, but when we transfer the PDF file to another system (or reboot the system), everything works fine.

I'm not even sure it's a PXCView problem. The crash happens in pcxview.dll but that doesn't mean that's the cause. It could well be memory corrupted by other code (such as ours).

[John - Tracker Supp]

Is it possible for you to supply one of our example app's to the user and ask them to view the file in that and report if the issue is still present ?

[johnr@etakeoff.com]

That's a possibility. (If it happens with a cooperative customer.) Would your viewer be an appropriate application? It may be a few weeks before we run into it again.

BTW, next time we run into a REPEATABLE crash, I'll pass that file along.

[John - Tracker Supp]

I would not reccomend our Viewer for this purpose as it is using the ActiveX as opposed to the Simple Viewer DLL option - hence the suggestion you send a sample app from that SDK and not the ActiveX SDK

[johnr@etakeoff.com]

You say to use one of your example apps. Can you suggest one? I'm not really familiar with them.

[John - Tracker Supp]

Sure : pxcview36_sample_app.exe

You can rename and dont forget the supporting dll's etc