OpenPHT hangs on run, GUI never initializes

I’ve had a problem the last couple days with running OpenPHT and then never having the GUI initialize. The exe is running in the background in task manager, but I don’t get an interface.

I’m on Windows 10 x64 Pro, running 2xGTX 970 with driver version 359.06. Plex Media Player is working fine on the same machine, so it doesn’t appear to be a Plex server issue. I’ve tried doing a clean reinstall of OpenPHT, to include deleting the program data folders, to no avail. I’ve attached the log file.

Same problem for me.

@sylinen:
Please clarify if OpenPHT now fails that way every time you launch the program, or just some of the times.

I’d also like to know if you had it working well before these failures started, and for how long it did work.
This is mainly to consider whether or not it’s original working may have been a ‘fluke’, and/or if your current problems may be caused by some system change/update. Unfortunately these things are extra likely to happen even without user intervention under Win10, since Microsoft is fond of forced background updates for this OS.

@jweaks:
Please clarify if “same problem” also means that you have the same hardware and OS environment.
If not, please state any differencies.

I have myself tested OpenPHT 1.5.0 under Win10pro_x64 and Win10pro_x86 without such problems, but those are not the OS I normally use for entertainment purposes (I use them only for compatibility testing, as I dislike the Microsoft spyware policy of those OS). Normally I use Win7pro_x64 (also without your problems), so my testing under Win10 has been of limited extent.

I will start a new series of tests now, to see if some new Win10 update since last I tried it might interfere with OpenPHT on my systems as well.

Best regards: dlanor

I’ve seen that in both PHT and OpenPHT in rare cases when something glitches the server connection enough that it hangs up (for some reason). When that happens, telling the app to close does not really close the app (at least, not the hidden version of the app). When the program is hanging around in that state no new version will start. I have always just force-closed the version in task manager, and it then goes back to working fine.

@dlanor OpenPHT fails that way every time I launch the program. Prior to this failure, I’d been running OpenPHT for three weeks without any issues. I probably ran the program hundreds of times over that three weeks without any errors.

@sylinen:
I’m afraid there’s no definite advice I can give you on how to solve this, since you’ve already tried the most extreme method. (Uninstalling OpenPHT completely, deleting its appdata folder, and then reinstalling.) That should work on any normal system, and has always worked for me. But Win10 is a very new OS with some very weird peculiarities, and one or more of those must be involved in the problems you’re having.

That said, I have not been able to replicate the issue on either of my two virtual Win10 installations.
(One 64-bit and one 32-bit. Both under VMware).

The only issue I’ve seen which could cause any application to crash frequently is a tendency of the background apps specific to Win10 to consume all available CPU time. This issue caused a lot of problems with my Win10 systems, until I disabled the permission for such apps to make background notifications. Even when they’re not making any at all (at least not visibly), that setting can cause the Win10 apps to eat tons of CPU time, presumably recursively processing stuff that could need notifications (even when they don’t need it). If you haven’t already disabled those notifications, that’s something you should try. It’s a good idea to open the task manager before you do it, so you can keep an eye on how much this setting affects the total CPU usage. (In my own cases it dropped from over 95% to below 5%.)

Best regards: dlanor

@dlanor There definitely isn’t a background process eating up CPU time. CPU usage never goes above 20% while attempting to run OpenPHT. There’s also no memory leak, as OpenPHT reaches 261MB of memory usage and remains that way. CPU usage shouldn’t be an issue anyway, as I’m running a 3770k.

@sylinen:
Well, I’m glad you don’t have that CPU usage problem, but you should know that for those that do suffer from it, there’s no dependency at all on the total CPU power. The erroneous Win10 code can consume all of it, regardless of how powerful the CPU is. But it doesn’t trigger for everyone, as it does depend on some of the settings for the background apps (which by default are always running on every Win10 system, until the user explicitly disables them).

In any case, your problem is a total mystery to me. Something fundamental must have changed in your system between the time when you could use OpenPHT hundreds of times without failure and the current period where every single launch attempt fails. If only we could find out what that change was, and replicate it on another PC, then we might be able to either fix it in OpenPHT (if that is the problem) or create some workaround for the system (to revert whatever affects OpenPHT this way).

Best regards: dlanor