The described behavior and screenshots exactly resemble what would happen in earlier versions of Windows when the system was low on GDI resources. It could be that PB 2021 is less efficient in use of resources. Can you reproduce by opening a lot of graphics-heavy windows, running multiple apps, etc.?

Hi all:

First, thank you for all the suggestions.  We have tried everything and it looks like we've narrowed it down to a memory leak in a third party tool we use to display our images.  We've submitted a ticket their company but given past experiences we are not hopeful. 

Since everyone is so helpful here, I thought I'd ask another question of those who have experience with any 3rd party tools, or even with PB tools that display images.  Before answering though, here is additional information:

• Our images are stored on the network and we have 2.5 million of them of varying sizes and clarity based on where they are being displayed, i.e., web vs our PB applications
• We display large and thumbnail images.  And we can have thousands of images retrieved for display 
• One thing I left out before is we are compiling as 64bit exe.

We're currently playing with PB's web control to see how that helps us, but so far the retrieval speed is significantly slower.  Any tips/tricks there would be great.  Any suggestions on 3rd party tools would be great too.

Happy Wednesday all!

MJ

Chris, 

Our Network/Security Manager is asking if we need to download all of the classes you have, or just those for the Order Entry?  

And if you could point me in the right direction for the GDI stuff, that would be great!

MJ

how/where are the images stored/loaded?  are they all defined in a pbr file?

If not, is it possible you are changing the default directory in PB and that the image file names are not completely setup with the path?

for example:   myimage.png requires that the current directory has the file.

  C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp\myimage.png   will show the image no matter what the default directory is if the image is downloaded on the fly

Hello Mike:

Great questions.  The *.png files for the picture buttons are in the *.pbr file.

All the other images are retrieved from the database, from there we get their respective paths and pull them from the network.

We have been successfully doing it this way for 20 years, and no we are not changing the default directory in PowerBuilder.  

Hope that helps.

MJ

Hello Ronnie:

We've duplicated it inconsistently.  Now that I know to look for that, I can use Task Manager to do it.  However it would be great if we could do some kind of API call to get the current GDI resources.  I've done some research into that but I haven't found anything.  Do you happen to know of a way to do that?

MJ

Hello to all:

We were able to reproduce it the moment we hit the 10,000 GDI limit.  The interesting thing is we closed everything except the frame and it still has 9,312 GDI objects in memory.  We've been through the code and believe we have reset, destroyed, etc. all objects with regard to our images.  You would think by closing all the windows but the frame the number of GDI Objects would have decreased dramatically.  The frame itself is 198 GDI (at least it is when I first open the application).

Any suggestions on the quickest way to see what objects still exist?  Or is it a PBTrace?    Thanks.  

Hi, Mary Jane - 

I'm attaching a tiny sample app that shows how to invoke the GetGuiResources Windows API function. It's been tested both 32-bit and 64-bit.

I hope it helps.

Best regards, John