SAS EG 8 Application Crash

[jwilson]

Hi Everyone,

I currently have a support ticket open with SAS for this issue, but was hoping to get the community's thoughts as well.  I have been able to reliably replicate an application crash on EG 8 on all machines in my organization by following the steps in this video: https://i.gyazo.com/e89e25e7578ad6232c1f5d912cf487f7.mp4

Support advised me to check the Event Viewer -- I've pasted that below.  I was also advised to reinstall .net framework, which did not work, but also doesn't really make sense to me given this issue exists across all of our machines.  If anyone has EG 8, can you try to replicate my issue and let me know if it crashes your application?  You need to have two monitors in order for it to work.

Faulting application name: SEGuide.exe, version: 8.3.0.103, time stamp: 0x5f297a62
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.19041.2728, time stamp: 0xe7e53a4e
Exception code: 0xe0434352
Fault offset: 0x000000000002cd29
Faulting process id: 0x49ac
Faulting application start time: 0x01d97941113bc529
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\SASHome\SASEnterpriseGuide\8\SEGuide.exe
Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: b74a7e71-3ef5-49bf-9c1e-4ae0b10d5319
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

[SASKiwi]

What causes the crash? Just opening EG or some process within EG once open? Was it working OK before and if so what might have changed to cause it? Are you using 32-bit or 64-bit EG?

We use EG 8.3 in our organisation and I've never seen anything like this.

[jwilson]

What causes the crash is docking that programs folder back into the EG application after maximizing the log window in the second monitor (the video should be self explanatory but let me know what isn't clear and I'll try to make a new one).  We use EG 8.3 (8.3.0.103) (64-bit)

The application works fine normally, it's just when users are trying to dock and undock windows this crash happens.  We have some other crashes that seem related in some way but none that we can reliably replicate.

[SASKiwi]

OK, looks suspiciously like a bug to me. You could check to see if the latest version 8.3 Update 7 still has the problem or wait for advice from Tech Support.

[jwilson]

What do you mean latest version? When I click "check for updates" it tells me my software is up-to-date. Is there some other way to update?

Just to confirm -- those same steps don't crash your EG session? Are you in windows?

[SASKiwi]

I was just going by my EG which reports this:

which appears to be later than yours.

I haven't tried your problem as yet. Too busy with my day job 🙂

[jwilson]

update 7? that is really confusing!

[AlanC]

I don't think this is an EG issue even though EG is throwing the error. I would suspect the graphics driver or .NET. Try and turn off transparency in Windows, see if it fixes it. Update graphics drivers, make sure .NET Framework is up-to-date. Mess with graphics options.

The failure appears to occur when you dock the window which is an internal function in .NET. .NET uses the graphics driver. That is what makes me suspect that the error is thrown at the bottom and bubbles up. Just a swag. 

[jwilson]

Were you unable to replicate it? this issue is happening on every single one of our machines. We tried updating .net, it did not work.

[jwilson]

update:  I installed EG 8.3 on my personal machine and was able to replicate the bug.  I'm growing increasingly skeptical that this is not a bug.

[Stamp0307]

The exact thing happens with mine using 8.3.0.103.  I work on a remote desktop using Horizon VMWare.  If I close out of VMWare, keeping the remote desktop on, and log back in, it will crash with the same error.  I've done the same steps as you with uninstall/reinstall of SAS EG, .Net Runtime, turned off/on hardware rendering, services, you name it.  It's annoying, because if I'm running processes that take a long time, I can't close out of my VMWare session or else it will crash as soon as I log back in.  So I hope and pray it completes before logging back in.  One of our colleagues ended up getting his entire remote desktop refreshed because of the issue.  That seemed to have worked for him so far.  He and I out of a 20 person team experience it. 

[JuanS_OCS]

Hi there,

Not sure if all of you are running SAS locally with EG or connecting to a server but:
- SAS EG is not particularly designed to run long jobs. For that purpose, please do schedule a batch job, instead of being interactive. There are many ways to do it, feel free to pick one.
- For client/server connections, on one hand your connections might have been terminated by your network and how your virtualization software is configured. Please do align with your IT departments.
- There is a keepalive configuration option that can help sometimes, from the SAS configuration point of view.

[Patrick]

The OP @jwilson did unfortunately never tell us if and how the issue got resolved in the end. He did raise a SAS Tech Support track though. I suggest you also raise such a track and eventually reference the discussion here as well in this track. ...and give us an update if SAS TS can help you with a resolution.

[jwilson]

Hi everyone, OP here.  TL;DR the problem is a bug, but there are related crashes that may be caused by general profile corruption, so one potential solution (that worked for us in some cases) is posted below.

The conclusion of my support ticket (Ticket #7613776035) was unfortunately "This is ultimately an EG bug because EG should capture or manage the problem instead of  crash regardless of the underlying cause, and regardless whether I can replicate or not ( I still cannot), or whether other customers are reporting the issue...they are not... So, I entered a bug into our R&D's system so they can research.  I cannot promise a bug fix, nor can I give you a time frame as to when R&D will allocate resources for the required research into this issue."

As for @Stamp0307, I referenced in one of my earlier posts that we had some other seemingly related crashes that were more difficult to replicate.  We were able to resolve some of those by rebuilding the SAS profile through the steps outlined below.  Note that you will lose all of your custom application settings.  To the extent that those settings are causing the crash, you may want to change your settings in chunks and see if the crash starts again, to help narrow down what setting was causing this.  We tried something like that but the crashes stopped, so either we didn't put back all of our settings or the problem was just a generic corruption.  Again, this did not resolve the main issue I posted about, so I am not marking this as the solution.  Anyway, here are the steps:

1.  Close Enterprise Guide

2.  Navigate to C:\Users\%%USERNAME%%\AppData\Roaming\SAS

3.  Rename the SAS folder from "SAS" to "SAS_old" (really anything will do here)
4. Once you have renamed this folder, invoke a fresh Enterprise Guide session.

This is what they told us to do and it worked, though you might be able to get away with just renaming the "8" folder in "...\SAS\EnterpriseGuide\8" to 8_old or something. 

[Patrick]

Thank you @jwilson 

@Stamp0307 The more people and sites impacted by such an issue the higher the probability that R&D will allocate resources for the required research into this issue. SAS will only know if you raise this with SAS Tech Support.