Search function problems (crash!)

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ECourts
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Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2007 6:19 pm

Search function problems (crash!)

Post by ECourts »

I'm a long term user of PopPeeper and have been excitedly waiting for V5 because of the announced search function.

I've installed Beta 19 today and of course the first thing I wanted to try was search. I must say in advance that my mail databases are large (about 15 POP3 accounts, some quite empty, some quite large, but with a total of around 90,000 messages. One of my first actions was to try the search on an account with about 3600 messages in it. I'm afraid after about 4-5 minutes of processing (no results displayed) the application crashed ("Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library - Runtime Error! - This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way"). The problem is repeatable.

As an aside - is it possible to stop or pause the search while it is in progress, or do I always have to wait until it completes (or in my case, crashes)?

Edwin
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Jeff
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Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2001 9:46 pm

Re: Search function problems (crash!)

Post by Jeff »

The first thing I would suggest trying is do a search for the following (include the slahses):
//reset//
It will ask if you're sure you want to reset, so press yes. Then perform a simple search and see if it works or not.

If not:

1) Using the progress bar below the search box for reference, does it always crash at the same point? (If you had to guess, about what percentage is it at?)

2) How much free drive space do you have on both your C: drive and the drive that stores POP Peeper's data (check this under main menu: Tools / Options / Storage)?

3) After PP crashes, can you tell me the size of your search.db file -- Go to main menu: Tools/Options/Storage and double-click on the text "data path" -- this will open File Explorer to that folder; you can find 'search.db' in this folder.

4) What Windows OS and what are your computer specs? Specifically: CPU, amount of RAM, and what type of drive (e.g. ssd, hdd, thumbdrive) is storing PP's data? If you're not sure about any of that, we'll get back to that later.


You cannot stop/pause the indexing. Is there a particular reason you'd want to (not related to the crash)? e.g. does the indexing negatively impact your system performance?
ECourts
Posts: 45
Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2007 6:19 pm

Re: Search function problems (crash!)

Post by ECourts »

Thanks for the response, Jeff,

first and foremost, your reply lead to a revelation that when I initiate a search a new, empty ("search") tab is opened. I'd not realised that I could go back to other (e.g. Inbox) tabs and continue to work normally while search was running in the background. I had assumed that POP Peeper was effectively frozen while search was running (as a blank window appeared and I was waiting for results), but I now realise that it's running in the background. That means I'm no longer concerned about stopping the search as I realise I can continue to work while it's searching.

I reset the search database and still get the crash.

To answer your other questions:
- it always seems to stop at about the same point. I'd reckon on around 30%.
- the C: drive is the same drive that stores POP Peeper's data, and is 426GB large with 161GB of free space
- search.db is 32KB large (I assume it does not start from scratch if PP restarts after the crash?)
- This is a Lenovo Carbon X1 (5th Generation) Laptop with Windows 10 Pro (Update 2004), Intel i7 @2.80Ghz (Kaby Lake), 16GB memory, Toshiba 512GB SSD, Intel HD Graphics 620

I've also now run the search on different mailboxes (I assume it's mailbox specific?) and always seem to have the same problem

Thanks again,

Edwin
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Jeff
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Re: Search function problems (crash!)

Post by Jeff »

POP Peeper is indexing ALL your messages (it's not account-specific). Once the index has been created, subsequent searches will be much faster. The file size of your search.db suggests that it is not updating, which is expected based on the progress of where it's crashing.

Based on your description (ie. that it crashes at about the same progress each time), my theory is that there's a particular message causing the problem. So we'll need to figure out which message is causing the problem so that it can be diagnosed.

There's no method to do that within POP Peeper now, so I'll need to send you a custom build that can provide that information. Since your forum account has been around for a while and I have no way to know if your email address is still valid -- please email me (support at esumsoft dot com) so that we can start the process, and we'll move the discussion to email.
ECourts
Posts: 45
Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2007 6:19 pm

Re: Search function problems (crash!)

Post by ECourts »

Message sent. Looking forward to hearing from you
Edwin
henry66
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Joined: Sun May 24, 2015 3:26 am

Re: Search function problems (crash!)

Post by henry66 »

let me jump in here, because that will verify very much what you are thinking: such 'blockages' in search functions i have had in many other systems, be they online-webmails, or external programs like MAILSTORE, ePrompter (1999-2011, still going strong for specific purposes), and so on. as with your samples, usually with very large 20-90000 files in the database.

if and when i was able to find out why, it ALWAYS was a bad, for whatever reason defunct or corrupt file, sometimes able to see it, sometimes just knowing it was there. also huge (very huge!) attachments could do that.

blocking some accounts, one by one, or taking certain years out of an account, i sometimes (!) was able to trace the culprit - but not always.

such corrupt files also block pure mail storage programs like MAILSTORE. which is great fun, after indexing 73000 files it jumps back to zero. thats how it was in their older versions - the newer ones just jump over the bad files, but tell you at the end where they are.

not sure if your search function could do just that: jump over a blocking file after xx seconds if there is no response, and at the end telling you which files that were?

a simple mind i have, so a simple approach.

greetings - heinz -
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Jeff
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Re: Search function problems (crash!)

Post by Jeff »

The thought of a corrupt message DB also crossed my mind, but I think we've found the problem. The current implementation of PP's search indexing is using crazy amounts of memory, so I'm working on redesigning the search database and workflow to be more memory efficient.
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