Helicon Focus freezes immediately on load

[linty]

Hi,
I've owned helicon focus since 2009 and have never had any major problems until recently, on a fresh windows 7 64 install I can't get it to work at all. Version 5 will freeze as soon as it loads, and version 6 beta will load but will freeze as soon as I try to view an image or render anything. When it freezes it becomes totally unresponsive but takes up 100% of the cpu cycles. Any ideas?

Steve

[Stas Yatsenko]

We had not similar reports. It is very strange that two completely different versions have the same problem. Can you try Helicon Filter and see if the same problem appears?

I would recommend you to run some stability test programs (LinX) to test your system. Once we had a user which had a dusty CPU cooler and this caused CPU overheating during focus stacking.

[linty]

Hi Stas,

I ran LinX this morning (default settings, run 20 times) with no problems. I also tried out Helicon Filter and it seemed to work fine as well. I think the problem occurs when HFocus tries to display an image, which is immediately in v5, but not in v6. If I run v6 it is stable until the instant I add an image, even a tiny jpg, at which point it just freezes (but my system stays stable).

I should explain my symptoms a little better:
When it freezes my computer stays stable, albeit slow. Taskman shows helicon focus using 99% of the cpu. I noticed yesterday that if I let it run for a while I will eventually get a windows error telling me the program stopped working and asking if I'd like to submit error info to microsoft. I will check the event viewer tonight to see if I can get any hints from there.

I'm running windows 7 64 bit
16 gigs ram
phenom II x6 processor
radeon 5500HD graphics card
HF is installed on my system drive which is an SSD

[linty]

Event viewer just tells me that HF stopped interacting with windows. I only get that error in HF6, in HF5 it just hangs forever.
I tried running as admin and also running compatibility modes which also didn't help.

[Stas Yatsenko]

The only idea I have now is to assign only one processor to Helicon Focus 6 and see what happens.

You can do this in Task Manager\Processes\HeliconFocus.exe\Context menu\Set Affinity ...

(http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ban ... 815-2.html)

99% load of the processor means that your all 6 cores are busy. I wonder what happens if you assign only one processor.

I will also send you a link to newer version of Helicon Focus 5.

[linty]

No luck, the only difference is that it uses 17% cpu when it hangs.

[Stas Yatsenko]

Please try these versions:
http://www.heliconsoft.com/downloads/HeliconFocus.exe
http://www.heliconsoft.com/downloads/He ... 6.0.11.exe

[linty]

Hi Stas,
Same problem as always. Is there anything I can do to help diagnose it?
Also, would it be easier if I went through help desk rather than on the forum?

Steve

[Stas Yatsenko]

Yes, Steve, let us continue this bug tracking in Help Desk. This is very strange that bug appears in both versions of Helicon Focus. I am afraid we would need to make many test versions to locate the bug. Thanks for your help.