OT: Sharing Violation

I know i had asked this once before and got a "solution" / program that was supposed to tell what the heck was using file in question. I tossed the program because it did not work at all. Commonly the problem happens when i look at a PDF, exit out of Acrobat, do something else and want to look at the PDF again and cannot: "sharing violation". Help?

If it's the typical exit out of Acrobat where it crashes, that might be your problem.

Have you looked for rogue processes in Task Manager?

Agreed. I switched to PDF-XChange Viewer (free) on 4 machines and haven't had a crash since: One nice feature is that if you're stuck with a non-searchable scanned PDF document, PDF-Xchange has a built in OCR reader that will make the file searchable.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

It's typical of Acrobat and a common problem. Someone had the great idea of making Acrobat restart quickly by leaving the ACRORD32.EXE process running for about 5 minutes. If you fire up the task manager, you'll see it running, and not disappear when Acrobat exits. That's great for Acrobat, not so great if your short on RAM, and really bad if you have another program come along and want to use the file you just viewed. It's especially a problem for documents opened in a browser, but will also happen if there's an error in the PDF, and Adobe doesn't know how to deal with it. Continuous backup programs (i.e. Carbonite), some remote control software, and various directory sync programs are common culprits. There's also an oddity if you have the PDF file shared to network. It will open once, but after that, will refuse to open complaining that someone else is using the file. I think that's what's happening here.

There's a check box in the Acrobat preferences for tweaking the "fast start" or something like that, but last time I tried it, it did nothing.

The fix is disgusting. Bring up the task manager and kill the ACRORD32.EXE process. Even Adobe recommends that because for some odd reason, they don't consider it their problem:

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

or:

Use the "Find" menu to look for likely culprits.

-- Jeff Liebermann snipped-for-privacy@cruzio.com

150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060 Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

I have NO files shared, period. All remote processes are disabled. I think there was some kind of sysinternals(?) program that would blab all running stuff - but i could not get it to work. Maybe there is a newer version that might work. I am curious as all hell as to WTF locked the file. It is a bit stupid, really - all the OS has to do is tag a file read only if it was busy, and maybe alert user. That is worst case. No reason why a file cannot be open more than once.

I use this for those moments.

--
Mike Perkins 
Video Solutions Ltd 
www.videosolutions.ltd.uk

Yup. That fixed it for me as well.

[...]

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

I'm curious. WHY does everyone EXCEPT ME have such troubles with Acrobat?

I have Acrobat v4, v7 and Reader X in concurrent residence... nary a problem.

Of course I'm on WinXP SP3. Maybe you're running Microshit's latest crap? ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson | mens | | Analog Innovations | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Possibly because you are using the paid version. The free reader was of such poor reliability here (on all three machines) that I switched to Foxit. That made a day-and-night difference.

All XP here as well. And it will stay that way for now.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

But I AM having trouble with Firefox... every time I turn around, it's locked-up :-( ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142   Skype: Contacts Only  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

And you say _I_ am the guy who has computer stuff crash all the time? Firefox is quite stable here. What does crash on occasion is the dreaded "plug-in container". I often keep the task manager open to be able to quickly snuff out software that has gone rogue on me.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

I stay with Firefox 12.0 on XP. I had problems with later versions and some crashes. A few sites don't like it so I switch to FF 20.0 on Ubuntu. For some reason it never crashes, but I don't need to use it very often so there my be problems I'm not aware of yet.

Flash is my biggest problem. It doesn't crash, but it completely messes up XP. I normally go back to Ubuntu to view Flash.

For a good PDF reader, try the free PDF-XChange Viewer:

It has never crashed on me. It is fast and also does OCR so you don't need Any2DjVu to make a scanned pdf searchable.

JK

Open 'task manager' and kill 'plugin container'. It's all the dammed scripts that lock up the browser by using up your RAM and CPU cycles.

Which is your default for viewing PDF files? If the default is set to v4 of v7, I can guess why you're NOT having problems. Control Panel -> Folder Options -> File Types Scroll down the Extensions column until you find "PDF". Double click and see what it "Opens with:" . It should offer a clue as to the version.

I have to run what my customers run. So, I run one of everything in the office. My "production" machines all run XP SP3. Every one of the machines has had problems with Acrobat Reader.

I've wasted a fair number of hours trying to determine the cause and testing various alleged fixes. I've tried running it in the browsers, outside the browsers, with and without a cache, with and without preload, etc. I tried different versions. I tried different types of test files. I tried watching what it was doing with various utilities: I tried both scripted and manual clearing of the crap it leaves behind in the registry. I've even tried giving it a pre-allocated block of RAM to play in. Nothing has helped. It hang on loading, on exit, on rendering, and on downloading eventually. I can go for a day or two without a problem, and then have it hang many times in a row. In short, the beast is not consistent or repeatable enough to effectively troubleshoot or trace.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

v7. Occasionally it won't open a newer type, so I open it with Reader. If I want to save a copy I print to PostScript, run thru Acrobat, then save as v4 :-)

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142   Skype: Contacts Only  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Well, there's the answer to your question. By using the older version of Acrobat (Distiller) and by not using the current Acrobat Reader, you avoid all the hangs and crashes of the current version. It's a good example of my observation that features and functions get added faster than bugs are fixed.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Yup. I run a lot of old reliable stuff... I even still have one Win2K machine perking right along ;-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142   Skype: Contacts Only  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Known Issues for Acrobat Reader 9, X, and XI.

-- Jeff Liebermann snipped-for-privacy@cruzio.com

150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060 Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558