Code Composer Studio causes Blue Screen of Death when terminating the debugger

Hi Fabrice

I have similar issue some time.

I am using xds560plus emulator. It crashes some times but not often.

I believe it is cauzed by the windows driver.

Well in case you are using different emulator with me, I am not sure your reason is same with me

Hi Fabrice,

have either of you tried renaming ctools.dll?

Would you be willing to zip and send any error logs/dump files (.dmp) generated?  There is information on where to find these here

http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Troubleshooting_CCS

Please keep us informed.

Best Regards,
Lisa

Dear Lisa,

There are no dump files because THE WHOLE PC CRASHED WITH A BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH.

Regards

Hi Fabrice,

did you try renaming ctools.dll?

How reproducable is this?  Is there anything at all you can send?  Without error logs etc it is next to impossible for us to try and dig into these types of crashes. 

Please keep us informed.

Best Regards,

Lisa

Dear Lisa,

I located "ctools.dll", renamed it and tried to start CCS4. It fails and no project comes up in the "C/C++ Projects" tab. An error log tab appears listing a few java exceptions; copy attached.

8105.ccs4-open-fail-20120124-0944.log

I renamed "ctools.dll" back to its original name, and CCS4 still produces the same error!!!! I rebooted my PC, still the same error. What's going on?

Best regards,

  Fabrice

Hi Fabrice,

ok, let me see if I can get some colleagues to help digest the log file.   Does this happen with all projects and workspaces?

Best Regards,
Lisa

Yes.

I also forgot to mention that the crash is entirely repeatable, except for a few times after a had to re-install CCS4 for another reason.

Best regards,

  Fabrice

Hi Fabrice,

we are wondering whether at least one issue you are seeing is due to a corrupted workspace.

Could you please try deleting the .metadata file as well as the .launches and keep us informed.  You may need to reimport your project, but aside from that there is no problem with removing these two files.

Best Regards,
Lisa

Dear Lisa,

I already tried that.

The exceptions when starting CCS4 that I mentioned in another thread are now gone.

But the BSOD crash is still there.

I tried to uninstall my system-wide JRE which is more recent than the one supplied with eclipse, and the BSOD crash is still there as well.

Best regards,

  Fabrice

HI Fabrice,

ok, thanks for the update.  We are working on seeing what might be causing the BSOD.   Glad to hear that the exceptions are now cleared.  I will get back to you as soon as I have further feedback.

Best Regards,
Lisa

Hi Fabrice,

ok, one further thing to try here.   Now the java expections are gone, could you please restore ctools.dll and see how things go.  Please keep us informed.  Do you still get instability/BSOD etc?

Best Regards,
Lisa

Dear Lisa,

I already mentioned in the other thread that I renamed ctools.dll back to its original name and the exceptions were still there.

I thus re-re-install CCS4 and deleted my ".metadata" directory, and the exceptions went away.

The BSOD problem is still there and 100% reproducible.

Best regards,

  Fabrice

Hi Fabrice,

ok, I will get back to you as soon as I know whether there are any further ideas or things you can try.  Unfortunately a BSOD is not at all easy to track down as it is very tied into windows and the system etc.

Best Regards,
Lisa

Hi Fabrice,

I would hate to say that we are at a loss here.   I am going to tweak the team a last time in case there could be any ideas.

Best Regards,
Lisa

Dear Lisa,

That's a shame.

FYI, I tried with a different emulator and the same problem occurs.

Best regards,

  Fabrice

Fabrice,

I'm stumped as well. As you may know, a BSOD means an exception of some type occurred in the kernel. The emulator you are using has no kernel-level driver as it just uses the Windows USB driver for communication. All the CCS software would be running in user-mode. While user-mode code can crash, a user-mode problem should not cause a BSOD.

Some possibilities I can think of are: there is an incompatibility somewhere between the Windows driver, the USB hardware in your PC, and the USB implementation on the XDS100-class emulators. Another possibility is a conflict is occuring with another installed driver.  Both these possibilities will take some time and experimentation to narrow down.

Can I ask what type of PC you are using (brand and model), and if you have any other USB devices connected (other than perhaps a mouse and keyboard)?

Dear Andy,

My computer is a Dell Optiplex 780. The only other USB devices that are connected to it are a USB keyboard and a USB mouse.

Best regards,

  Fabrice

Fabrice,

Well, it would be surprising if there were any compatibility issues with that hardware.

Here are two more things we can try. I don't know if either of them will help though. If you right click on "my computer" and selected properties, and then select the "device manager", do  you see any devices with a "!" beside them?  That might indicate a problem with a specific device.

A second thing that might be worthwhile is ensuring your BIOS is up to date. You can find BIOS updates using the Dell support website. Please be sure to read any warnings Dell provides about applying BIOS updates, if there are any.

Dear Andy,

I had a look at the device manager as you suggested. I can indeed see a problematic device: "Texas Instruments XDS560 PCI JTAG Emulator". What is interesting is that there is no thing like that connected to my PC as far as I know... I only have 1 PCI card which is an additional ethernet card.

As far upgrading the BIOS, I'll try to see what I can do (it's a corporate PC).

Best regards,

  Fabrice

I am on the same page. Every 3rd or 4th time debugger crashes to Blue Screen of Death. I increased heap size and all other memory related suggestions. It has to be one of the crappy release of CCSv4.0,

I use IAR for other CPUs and has no issues. Visual studio, no issues. Xilinx development tools no issues. Only CCSv4.

I have Version: 4.2.5.00005

Windows 7 N professional

6 GB RAM

Eclipse INI file

-vmargs
-Xms256m
-Xmx1024m
-XX:PermSize=64m
-XX:MaxPermSize=128m
-DXPCOM.RUNTIME=C:\Texas Instruments\ccsv4\DebugServer\win32
-Dxpcom.bridge.executeOnDedicatedThread=no
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=C:\Texas Instruments\ccsv4\DebugServer\win32

Any hint. I am tired now. Have another thread open too with out any hint from TI.

This was not before. It has to be one one the 2012 patch. I am using CCSv4 since early 2011.

Whats going on.

Hi Andy,

I'm having allmost the same problem here. I'm Using Signum JTAG-JET and CodeComposer and have had BSOD everytime leaving the debugger. As my co-worker uses the same JTAG and CCS and does not experience any BSOD we compared the systems. We found out he has a newer JTAG-version but an older CCS-version. After updating the JTAG-driver I experience less BSOD but they still occur - not so comfortable to develop software :-) It occurs every 2nd to 4th time I think. The details:

on the co-worker's PC it works, on my PC I have BSOD

PC: Dell Precision T3500, Win7, SSD Samsung PM830,... (me & co-worker)

Target: two TMS320F2801 in JTAG-chain (me & co-worker)

JTAG: Signum Systems JTAG-JET-TMS (me & co-worker)

JTAG-Driver-Version: 2.4.0.0 (me, updated to 2.5.0.0, 2.4.0.0 is promoted for CSS4.1.3 and higher, 2.5.0.0 is promoted for CSS5)
JTAG-Driver-Version: 2.5.0.0 (co-worker)

CSSv4-Version: 4.2.5.00005 (me)
CSSv4-Version: 4.2.4.00033 (co-worker)

Maybe this information helps finding the cause.

Regards
  Marco

About the only way a user-mode app could be BSODing is for it to use a device driver that has some error.

Hello guys,

I had exactly the same problem. When I terminated the application, i used to see BSOD very frequently (%25 let's say). OS is Wİndows 7, emulator XDS510LC USB and CCSv4.

Furtunately my problem seems to be solved. I've been working this whole day and did not face any BSOD.

Of course the cause of the problem may be different for other guys complaining, but anyway i will share my solution for those who want to give a try.

After another BSOD, I checked the windows event viever and saw the Kernel-Power fault with bugcheckcode 244. After a little search from web, I found a windows hotfix for some device drivers. You can find the hotfix link below:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2722392/en

I installed the hotfix and after one day work no BSOD so far :)

You may want to give it a try.

Karim,

Wait for at least two weeks. My experience is only some days, BSOD happens. It looks funny to me and my colleagues that many time it crashes at 5:00 PM so we just leave.

Did you ever get to the bottom of this & its happening to me on a weekly basis? I've just started using CCS 3.3 (I can't move up to 7 yet because I'm working on a DM648, which isn't on the supported device list after 6).