Tue Jan 16, 2024 10:22 pm
Not seldom we get reports about LMMS suddenly changing behaviour and working different than expected.
If you experience this, there are a sequence of actions that you should follow, before you post a new ticket.
#) Make a forced shutdown.
A forced shutdown is an action that will completely reset your pc and clean out every register.
It is easy and it will not harm your pc or any files on the pc. In fact forced shutdown is the best way to shutdown your pc! ( In contrast -the worst you can do is to Sleep your computer )
This is what you should do:
* Save all open files!
* Point your mouse to the Windows-symbol in lowest right, click it and scroll to the Power section.
* Rest your mouse over the option Shut-down
* Press and hold down left SHIFT
* Mouse-select Shut-down -Do not release the SHIFT-key!
You should notice that the shutdown takes significantly longer time than usually. This is because Windows clean every part of data in your RAM. That is not the case if you make a normal shutdown.
A forced or 'shifted-shutdown' will always let you boot on a cleaned pc!
Always do this when any program has behaviour that is surprising ao erroneous.
After the shutdown is finished you can let go of SHIFT.
It is now recommended that you pull the plug from your main-socket, and leave the pc like that for a couple of minutes. -Iow, its time for a coffee : p
If you have any external hardware connected to your pc, f.i. a MIDI-keyboard, you should also unpluck that and let it rest.
After that rest, witch we do because it is best for your pc' power-supply, boot up and load the program that gave you grief -Only LMMS is relevant for us : )
Dont start any other programs. Only start LMMS!
Redo the actions that led to malfunction in the first place. If the outcome is changed expected and normal behaviour, then your forced-shutdown followed by the cold-boot solved the issue you had, and you are good to go.
Remember to regularly do a forced-shutdown and cold-boot. It can spare you for loads of trouble!
If on the other hand you still have a malfunctional program:
#) Examine the bad behaviour with a different project-file.
Either open a new project and try to recreate the malfunction from scratch, or open a copy of the project that is acting up, and de-construct it piece by piece as you also make repeated tests as you go.
It is very helpful if you can explain how to re-create the problems that you have.
If neither using a new project or dissecting a copy of an existing project solves your issue, then try and search if someone else also have reported the problem. If you find such post, you are most welcome to add comments to the post, and let us know what you have experienced.
Attaching a project-file can also help, but if you do, it should be a MMP file, because that type we can examine, we cant do that with MMPZ-files!
One additional reason for malfunctional software are hidden running programs!
Some of these may qualify as real malware, and are placed by hackers on your system, some are just bad unstable apps, like the multitude of pesty 'bars' and and what-apps, discord or browser extensions. Some you may have installed yourself, because they seamed nice, some may have been installed by free software because you forgot to disable an installation option, and you got 'much more' installed than you meant to.
Examining this kind of garbage can be a bit technical, but you can always inspect your Start-menu and check if you have programs in your start-sequence that you did not know about, and that you do not need/ want to allow running, and staling resources..
You can find a list of all programs that automatically are loaded every time you start your computer:
* Right-click your quick-access-bar
* From the context-menu select Task-manager
* In the tabs select Startup:
Here you find all programs that has automatic access to your computer!
Beside your virus-scanner and Windows-security, that list should be empty!
You should make it a habit to look at your Startup-list once a month, just to make sure nothing has sneaked 'in'. If there are items that obviously does not need to run on your pc, disable the app!
Even though this post is a bit more about general pc-awayness than pure LMMS-know-how, all of the above can make any program behave oddly, and that includes LMMS : )
Oh ya.. one more thing: Nightlies
Never open any of your valuable projects in Nightly! More precise never use Nightly for production!
Nightly releases can ruin your project-file, because Nightly are experimental releases!
Nightlies are somewhat from programmer to programmers, and not for regular users.
If you experience this, there are a sequence of actions that you should follow, before you post a new ticket.
#) Make a forced shutdown.
A forced shutdown is an action that will completely reset your pc and clean out every register.
It is easy and it will not harm your pc or any files on the pc. In fact forced shutdown is the best way to shutdown your pc! ( In contrast -the worst you can do is to Sleep your computer )
This is what you should do:
* Save all open files!
* Point your mouse to the Windows-symbol in lowest right, click it and scroll to the Power section.
* Rest your mouse over the option Shut-down
* Press and hold down left SHIFT
* Mouse-select Shut-down -Do not release the SHIFT-key!
You should notice that the shutdown takes significantly longer time than usually. This is because Windows clean every part of data in your RAM. That is not the case if you make a normal shutdown.
A forced or 'shifted-shutdown' will always let you boot on a cleaned pc!
Always do this when any program has behaviour that is surprising ao erroneous.
After the shutdown is finished you can let go of SHIFT.
It is now recommended that you pull the plug from your main-socket, and leave the pc like that for a couple of minutes. -Iow, its time for a coffee : p
If you have any external hardware connected to your pc, f.i. a MIDI-keyboard, you should also unpluck that and let it rest.
After that rest, witch we do because it is best for your pc' power-supply, boot up and load the program that gave you grief -Only LMMS is relevant for us : )
Dont start any other programs. Only start LMMS!
Redo the actions that led to malfunction in the first place. If the outcome is changed expected and normal behaviour, then your forced-shutdown followed by the cold-boot solved the issue you had, and you are good to go.
Remember to regularly do a forced-shutdown and cold-boot. It can spare you for loads of trouble!
If on the other hand you still have a malfunctional program:
#) Examine the bad behaviour with a different project-file.
Either open a new project and try to recreate the malfunction from scratch, or open a copy of the project that is acting up, and de-construct it piece by piece as you also make repeated tests as you go.
It is very helpful if you can explain how to re-create the problems that you have.
If neither using a new project or dissecting a copy of an existing project solves your issue, then try and search if someone else also have reported the problem. If you find such post, you are most welcome to add comments to the post, and let us know what you have experienced.
Attaching a project-file can also help, but if you do, it should be a MMP file, because that type we can examine, we cant do that with MMPZ-files!
One additional reason for malfunctional software are hidden running programs!
Some of these may qualify as real malware, and are placed by hackers on your system, some are just bad unstable apps, like the multitude of pesty 'bars' and and what-apps, discord or browser extensions. Some you may have installed yourself, because they seamed nice, some may have been installed by free software because you forgot to disable an installation option, and you got 'much more' installed than you meant to.
Examining this kind of garbage can be a bit technical, but you can always inspect your Start-menu and check if you have programs in your start-sequence that you did not know about, and that you do not need/ want to allow running, and staling resources..
You can find a list of all programs that automatically are loaded every time you start your computer:
* Right-click your quick-access-bar
* From the context-menu select Task-manager
* In the tabs select Startup:
Here you find all programs that has automatic access to your computer!
Beside your virus-scanner and Windows-security, that list should be empty!
You should make it a habit to look at your Startup-list once a month, just to make sure nothing has sneaked 'in'. If there are items that obviously does not need to run on your pc, disable the app!
Even though this post is a bit more about general pc-awayness than pure LMMS-know-how, all of the above can make any program behave oddly, and that includes LMMS : )
Oh ya.. one more thing: Nightlies
Never open any of your valuable projects in Nightly! More precise never use Nightly for production!
Nightly releases can ruin your project-file, because Nightly are experimental releases!
Nightlies are somewhat from programmer to programmers, and not for regular users.