James Fee GIS Blog

31 responses so far ↓

• 1 hmm... // Jan 28, 2008 at 9:01 pm

  This Technical Article is obviously an early April Fool’s joke. Everyone knows ArcGIS will crash periodically no matter what browser you use.

• 2 Paul // Jan 28, 2008 at 9:17 pm

  My - what a clear and concise “fix”.
  If one were a conspiracy nut — one might conclude that is another example of the Microsoft machine trying to suppress yet another web browser competitor.

  Does Opera really compete with IE? No, of course not. But stories like this are not uncommon examples of how MS treats the browser competition.

  Actually, as I peruse the latest ArcNews - I see this little nugget - which would seem to be at odds with the supplied fix for the “periodic” crash caused by Opera:

  ” ESRI continues to focus efforts on integrating standards into the ArcGIS platform—particularly the server. These include Web standards, OGC standards, and enterprise standards—helping our users interoperate with other IT and GIS systems.”

  By the phrase “interoperate with other IT and GIS systems” ; perhaps they meant “other IT and GIS systems that use the IE web browser”.**

  **comment excludes all browsers running on MS Vista.

• 3 C Yohman // Jan 29, 2008 at 3:55 am

  Not that I use Opera, but what utter rot. For me, ArcMap likes to hang around in the background when I exit it.

  Keep in mind the Defense Department is buying into ESRI through CJMTK now. So, sleep save now when missions are planned in Desktop, Engine, or Server.

• 4 Andrew Hallam // Jan 29, 2008 at 4:10 am

  Nice find! As a regular user of Opera browsers (on Linux and Mac) I find that facinating. I’d love to know why Opera “often interferes with ArcGIS and causes it to systematically crash” and why “Opera Web browser must be removed”.

  That’s appears to be a significant accusation against Opera without providing any facts to back it up. All versions of Opera on Windows?

• 5 Murky // Jan 29, 2008 at 4:35 am

  I use Opera for general web browsing and have ArcMap installed on my system. I’ve never had a problem with it (with Opera crashing ArcMap, that is).

  I’ve put up ESRI sofware crashing for over 10 years, but blaming it on my browser of choice is not cool. If I have to uninstall something…it won’t be opera!

  Does manifold work with Opera?

• 6 Murky // Jan 29, 2008 at 5:02 am

  To qualify my earlier post: I use Opera 90% of the time, but I do not have it set up as my default browser.

  Now I’m on mission to crash my Opera into my ArcMap and see what happens. I wish ESRI would give more information on the issue.

• 7 Tom Savage // Jan 29, 2008 at 6:01 am

  I don’t have Opera installed on my workstation, but of course ArcMap does decide to go south once in a while. My crashes always happen during an EDIT session.

• 8 Kevin Dunlop // Jan 29, 2008 at 6:02 am

  Well, ArcToolbox uses IE to display the tool parameters when you open it. There was a bug with IE7 when it first came out which cause toolbox not work correctly. So I guess this could be the case with Opera but I don’t see why it would happen every 30 mins and not just when you open certain tools/window.

• 9 SeanG // Jan 29, 2008 at 7:23 am

  It’s true. By just have the two open at the same time, ArcMap crashes as soon as I try to do anything like add a new layer. As long as Opera isn’t open then ArcMap works fine, er relatively fine.

• 10 Brian Flood // Jan 29, 2008 at 7:28 am

  seems like an odd bug. I can’t repro using 9.2.1380 and Opera 9.25 but it sounds like one of those issues specific to certain machines

• 11 Murky // Jan 29, 2008 at 7:37 am

  I can’t get it to crash. I’ve even set Opera as default, and tried all sorts of things. Including adding layers.

  Opera gets called for help & hyperlinks, as expected.

  SeanG: did you figure out whose fault it is? i’ve been profiling my arcmap.exe all morning, but until i crash, i won’t know.

  Why won’t ArcMap crash when I want it to?

• 12 Steve Larch // Jan 29, 2008 at 10:13 am

  I’m pretty sure Opera isn’t the reason for ArcMap’s poor error handling.

• 13 Chris // Jan 29, 2008 at 11:44 am

  Steve, I’m sure you are right. ESRI is the reason for ArcMap’s poor error handling… if you follow my logic. (I say that with tongue fully in cheek as I start ArcMap)

• 14 SeanG // Jan 29, 2008 at 3:19 pm

  @Murkey: I don’t know if I can figure out whose fault it is. I only know that I can’t have the two open at the same time. I have Opera 9.25 Build 8827 and ArcMap 9.2 (Build 1420), License Type: ArcInfo. It doesn’t crash with any notice either, no option to send Microsoft an error report, ArcMap just closes.

• 15 atanas entchev // Jan 29, 2008 at 6:59 pm

  “Sorry, this technical article (34262) is currently unavailable.

  REASON: This article either does not exist or is being edited by our staff.”

• 16 Paul // Jan 29, 2008 at 9:58 pm

  …dang, James has real JUICE! ; )

  ESRI is indeed working on the article (10:55 CST now) — good catch atanas.

  Hey, James — what can you do about global warming, the price of gas, or that silly ‘dance wars’ show on tv?

• 17 Andrew Hallam // Jan 30, 2008 at 1:08 am

  If SeanG, or anyone else, is interested in looking for shared libraries or conflicting files I suggest downloading Process Explorer and having a look in DLL mode. It is a useful tool for diagnosing this sort of problem.

• 18 Murky // Jan 30, 2008 at 4:42 am

  Process Monitor, Process Explorer, FileMon (now part of Process Monitor…but it still works and I still use it) are all tools that I’ve used in the past diagnosing these sorts of problems.

  Also depends.exe. I can’t remember where that came from, maybe from an older Visual Studio or VB install. That’s the one I use to profile apps and save out the results to a text file (usually more info than I know what do with).

  I’ve sent lots of those to ESRI. I think they delete them upon arrival.

• 19 Jake B // Jan 30, 2008 at 12:37 pm

  Looks like someone noticed

• 20 James Fee // Jan 30, 2008 at 12:43 pm

  I guess it is fixed then?

• 21 bender // Jan 31, 2008 at 3:10 am

  i’ve encountered a strange error here. if i point my webbrowser to spatiallyadjusted.com to write a comment and have arcmap opened, my phone rings and my mummy asks me if i don’t want to visit them at the weekend. this always happens on a tuesday. after 666 seconds (nearly 10 minutes) being on my phone i always get the vicious idea to start arcgis explorer. seeing that, my face starts freezing and i know that i have to consume more botox from my buzzing enterprise dealer driving around in my open geospatial architecture in his enterprise service bus. do i miss a patch or do i need a reboot?

• 22 Rft183 // Jan 31, 2008 at 10:19 am

  I can’t use Opera anymore at work, because everytime I use it, ArcMap crashes. I have recently changed jobs, and have experienced ArcMap crashing while using Opera on computers at both jobs. Since my work relies on ArcMap, I’ve had to drop Opera.

• 23 Rft183 // Jan 31, 2008 at 10:27 am

  I meant to include that I had posted about this problem on the Opera forums in November of 2006. I figured I would be more likely to get a response from Opera than ESRI! Sadly, I didn’t pursue it any further, so the problem was never fixed (obviously).

• 24 Mike // Feb 4, 2008 at 1:53 pm

  I don’t use Opera, however I do know the whole office had to uninstall IE 7.0 to work with our ESRI software. I hate ESRI, I still crash every other day at least, my office bought me a superbad brand new computer last week- it just crashed…4th time in two weeks with no other software on it except the standard office soft. We all afraid to put anything on our computers since we’re always losing our work and going slightly mental.

• 25 Dan S. // Feb 4, 2008 at 3:11 pm

  Top Tip: I always install ArcMap and such inside a virtual machine (I use VMWare but there are plenty others — most of them seem to have a free player these days). That way, I don’t have to worry about this sort of “interaction” — and the speed hit is more than worth the lack of downtime from crashing.

• 26 Brady M. // Feb 5, 2008 at 7:28 pm

  After 2 machines and multiple instances of crashing (not half hourly, more like 30 - 40 timesa day), I too, havediscovered that I can stop the crashing cycle by not opening Opera. I don’t want to not use Opera, I love it too much. I will not touch IE nor will I use firefox. But It doesn’t crash now, so at least I can get some work done.

  Hope I can sort it out soon.

• 27 percy // Feb 6, 2008 at 12:50 am

  @brady
  maybe you should run opera inside a vmware instance…

• 28 Dave // Feb 29, 2008 at 3:05 am

  I’ve been working now quite along time with ArcMap and until now i was more or less happy with it. But since i installed 9.2 with SP4 of course, im really thinking about to change back to 9.1. It crashes a lot, it even destroys my maps/shapes and geodatabeses on regular basis.

• 29 J.B. Churchill // Mar 4, 2008 at 8:00 am

  The article now appears to have been taken down. Maybe ESRI is reading your blog !

• 30 Bruce // Mar 5, 2008 at 2:57 pm

  Here’s another surefire fix to get your work done and avoid almost all crashes. Fire up ArcView 3.3 …..

• 31 Dean // Mar 6, 2008 at 3:38 pm

  I’ve used Opera often and have not encountered such problem with ArcMap/Catalog opened at the same time. Here’s a different idea - maybe you can try having IE opened at the same time as Opera/ArcMap. You don’t have to use it, just leave an IE window open in the background or minimized. ArcDesktop is so integrated with Windows this may just ‘fool’ it despite the illogic…

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