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Direct MessagesDate/Time: Sat, 20 Apr 2024 09:36:06 +0000
[User Discussion] - SC has locked up, hidden dialog maybe the reason?
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| [2020-07-05 16:34:45] |
| j4ytr4der_ - Posts: 914 |
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I ran into a strange situation last night, have not had this happen before. SC is frozen, no matter what I click on it behaves as if there is an open dialog somewhere (I get the OS alert sound) but I can't see it anywhere. Nothing is clickable, I can't even move the application window by mouse (although the Windows keyboard shortcuts for moving an application window, do work). Mouse focus still works - if I put my mouse over a chart and scroll the wheel, it does interact. But that's the only interaction I'm capable of. Keyboard shortcuts also do not work. Everything else on the computer works fine (other applications etc.) Unfortunately I did quite a lot of tweaking last night on a spreadsheet I'm working with, and had not saved my work before this happened. I'm afraid to terminate the process because I'm hopeful I can somehow dismiss this seemingly-invisible dialog, and then save my chartbook. Has anyone ever encountered anything like this or have any suggestions on how to get out of this state? |
| [2020-07-05 17:39:44] |
| j4ytr4der_ - Posts: 914 |
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To add to this (I'm not sure it's related but I thought it worth mentioning)... I just opened a second instance of SC to see where my last-saved chartbook version was. Sure enough, there's a lot of tweaking I had made, that I really don't want to lose... so my original post above applies. But here's the other thing I noticed. I was adjusting the width of columns on my chart DOM, and by clicking on the leftmost column (which was pushed all the way left to the edge of the chart), I got the "New Quantity" dialog... and there seems to be no way to adjust the column width since this always happens. But here's the relevant part. The New Quantity dialog, can *only* be interacted with by mouse. You can't hit escape to dismiss it, can't hit Enter to accept it (even though the OK button is highlighted as the default selection), and ALL other interaction with the program is locked out! In fact, while that dialog is present it's behaving exactly like my main instance is. I'm wondering if somehow in that instance, I accidentally opened up the New Quantity dialog (or a similar dialog) and hid or minimized it. This behavior is just completely identical, except that in the secondary instance I can see the dialog and click to accept or dismiss it. I can't do this in the main instance. Just thought that might be something worth fixing as it sure seems like a bug (not being able to dismiss with Escape or accept with Enter). |
| [2020-07-05 17:40:58] |
| j4ytr4der_ - Posts: 914 |
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Aha! Escape DOES work - but *only* if you first manually click inside the text entry box for New Quantity. Definitely feels like a bug that should get fixed.
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| [2020-07-05 18:46:23] |
| cmet - Posts: 534 |
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Sounds similar to my issue noted in this thread: Setting Defaults For Studies Randomly Freezes Main Chart Window What do your logs say when this problem occurs if you don't mind me asking? Date Time Of Last Edit: 2020-07-05 19:20:22
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| [2020-07-05 19:05:44] |
| j4ytr4der_ - Posts: 914 |
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Unfortunately they don't say anything. And in fact I couldn't even get to them, until I thought to try some other troubleshooting steps... which has at least managed to save the spreadsheet I was working on. Here's what I did... Since it seemed like some sort of hidden window/dialog issue, I fired up a free utility called WinLister that allows me to see absolutely every window related process on the machine, including "hidden" windows. This allowed me to see the loads and loads of hidden windows that SC uses all the time, and go through them one by one. Unfortunately none of them appeared to be the culprit, and when I would bring the Spreadsheet to the foreground, it would hide itself again after a couple of seconds. It wouldn't stay in the forefront so I could do anything with it. I began force-closing every "invisible" window in SC... I knew this was potentially dangerous and could destabilize the program, but I had nothing else left to try that I could think of. Eventually, this enabled the Spreadsheet to come to the foreground, stay there, *AND* be able to interact with it! I was able to copy everything I needed out of that spreadsheet, and into a backup in another instance of SC. So whatever I've lost now, is only minor chart study changes. Then I saw your post asking about logs, and attempted to read them. The Message Log showed nothing unusual at all, but then I brought forward the Trade Activity Log (I had to access these windows through WinLister as they were inaccessible any other way), my main instance of SC crashed after a few seconds. So I'll never know what the logs might have held, though I doubt it's much of anything useful. Very strange situation here, I don't know that I'll ever reproduce it and I certainly hope not, but at least in this case I recovered my work. Lesson learned - Save Often!! I just wish we could do a Save on a spreadsheet by itself. Only way I've found to archive spreadsheets as you go is to duplicate them at various points from Explorer. |
| [2020-07-08 10:09:08] |
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A couple of notes to items that have been stated. - Turn on the following option to save the Message Log information to a file, which can then be looked at outside of Sierra Chart to see what may have occurred: General Settings Window: Save Message Log to File (Global Settings >> General Settings >> Log >> Log) - In order to save the spreadsheet, just save the Chartbook. This also saves the Spreadsheet information at that time. Also refer to: Notice: Stack Overflow Issue Sierra Chart Support - Engineering Level Your definitive source for support. Other responses are from users. Try to keep your questions brief and to the point. Be aware of support policy: https://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?l=PostingInformation.php#GeneralInformation For the most reliable, advanced, and zero cost futures order routing, *change* to the Teton service: Sierra Chart Teton Futures Order Routing |
| [2020-07-08 12:40:11] |
| j4ytr4der_ - Posts: 914 |
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Thanks, but in my case I could not save the chartbook because I couldn't interact with SC at all. If I'd been able to do that I wouldn't likely have even posted here about the problem. I rarely ever use the Set Defaults option but will watch for bad behavior in the future if I do.
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| [2020-07-08 16:21:18] |
| User472511 - Posts: 19 |
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When this happens try using the ALT key.
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| [2020-07-08 17:19:45] |
| j4ytr4der_ - Posts: 914 |
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Do you mean to access the menus by keyboard? In my case everything was 100% locked out, I tried every single key and combination I could come up with. Until I started shutting down hidden windows with WinLister, there was just no hope (and even that only got me access to the spreadsheet, I was never able to interact with that instance of the main SC interface again). Might help in a different case though.
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| [2020-07-09 15:42:37] |
| User580641 - Posts: 6 |
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Just ran into the same issue. I saw the message log, which I couldn't access say something about an exception and I couldn't interact with Sierra Charts at all. I had to kill it via task manager. All I was doing is trading via DOM. Wasn't messing with any settings. |
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