Frequent Eggplant crashes/graphical distortions

Eggplant Functional
#1

While recording and running scripts, Eggplant frequently crashes/becomes unusable. For example, while performing assisted record tasks (making a selection of an area for capturing), this happened:

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/4866/eggplanterror.th.png

It has also became unusable/crashed (with similar graphics issues as above) when:
–After a click on the “run script” button (on a script that functioned every other attempt)
–After failing to perform an action while running a script (instead of showing that “cannot find image” dialog as it normally would)
–While doing simple text edits in a script
–While scrolling through a script: http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/756/eggplanterror2.th.png

Here is some information about the machine that the script is running on:
OS: Windows XP Pro (5.1, Build 2600)
CPU: Intel Core2Duo @ 3.166GHz
Memory: 2GB
Make/Model: Dell Optiplex 960
Video card: NViDIA GeForce 9300 GE, connected to two monitors via DVI (each at 1280x1024) (512 MB RAM) (driver: nv4_disp.dll Version 6.14.0011.7542 date 10/27/2008)

Here is information on my eggplant installation:
RELEASE 10.21 + 1687
Current theme: WinUXTheme

The scripts address machines with the same exact specs. The machine also addresses itself–is this advisable? Or should the SUT always be different than the system running the eggplant script?

Would you suggest updating my video card drivers? We are trying to keep changes to the system images to a minimum, but if that’s advisable it can be done. I am developing current automation in both eggplant and ranorex, and eggplant is the only program i use that experiences these graphical/stability issues.

Thanks for any help/suggestions.

#2

The issue with the remote screen window becoming gray is one that we are aware of and have been working hard to narrow down and fix; it’s actually pretty difficult to replicate intentionally and some users don’t seem to see it at all, while others see it all to frequently. We believe we are close to resolving this problem for the next maintenance release. In the meantime you may find that this issue is triggered less frequently if you use the Control > Script Command > [command] menu items when generating scripts rather than the toolbar buttons; you might even want to hide the toolbar using the option under the Window menu so that you don’t use it inadvertently.

I’ve never seen the graphical issue in your second screenshot. Does it occur in conjunction with the problem in the first screenshot? Is this a particularly large script?

We’ve identified and fixed a number of potential crashing issues in the Linux version of the product and will be migrating those fixes to the Windows version for the next maintenance release. This should dramatically improve the overall stability of the Windows version.

The machine also addresses itself–is this advisable? Or should the SUT always be different than the system running the eggplant script?

The SUT always has to be at least a different user session. So if you are connecting to the same machine, you need to be connecting either to a vmed instance running on that machine or to a second user session/account. The latter is easily done on a Mac or Linux system, but I don’t believe it’s possible on a Windows machine.

The problems that you are seeing are in the application – changing the graphics card or any other system components is neither necessary nor useful. The maintenance release will be out within the next few weeks and should improve the overall function and stability of the product.

#3

The problem with graphic corruption/grey remote window has been addressed by version 10.22 available on our downloads page: http://www.testplant.com/downloads/