Zotero keeps crashing while editing metadata

dstillman Zotero Team
This discussion was created from comments split from: NEED HELP Zotero keeps crashing.
  • fghinami
    Hi, I have a similar problem.
    Zotero keeps crashing while simply changing docs infos (authors etc.),
    and Windows 10 crashes with it (which leads to an automatic system re-initialization and disk damages control..).
    A huge waste of time and a bit scary for my OS' health.


    Could you please check what's going on? Should I try to get an earlier version of Zotero maybe?
    Report ID: 22106892
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    edited November 10, 2022
    (Please start new threads for new issues. I've moved this to a new thread.)

    What exactly do you mean by crashing? Do you mean the program is closing completely, or something else? It would be extremely odd for Zotero to be crashing just from editing some fields in the right-hand pane. But if you really mean the program is crashing, can you email a crash log from the OS to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread?
  • fghinami
    edited November 11, 2022
    Thank you @dstillman.
    Yes, it does totally crashes suddenly with only 4 docs open and no major operations in place.

    Not only it freezes, I loose control of the pointer and when trying to close Zotero (but also when waiting a while for it to defreeze without touching anything),
    instead of just closing the program, it makes the whole OS to shut down, debug and reinitialize.
    I have enabled debug output logging now, next time it freezes I will post the log.
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    Well but that's not "crashing" — crashing means the program closes and you (probably) get a crash alert from the OS.

    It sounds like you're saying the program freezes.

    Do you have BBT auto-export enabled? If so, that's likely the problem.
  • fghinami
    Hi again, I was not well aware of the crashing/freezing difference, excuse my poor wording.

    I did have BBT auto-export set to "on change".

    I disabled it, hope it solves it, I'll post a follow-up on it.
    Thank you for the tip and explanations

  • dstillman Zotero Team
    @emilianoeheyns: We're still seeing reports of this. I think you said previously that there's a setting for doing these in the background vs. not (with background being the default), and I either asked or meant to ask why that's even an option. Causing freezes shouldn't really be an option.
  • emilianoeheyns
    edited November 11, 2022
    auto-exports are strictly background now, have been for a while. Manual exports still offer the choice.

    It was previously an option because the monkey patch to do background exports was one of the least elegant and I wanted a way for people to get on with their work should it fail. But it's been stable for a while now, and auto-export doesn't go through the translators infrastructure at all anymore (and so doesn't depend on the monkey-patch).
  • dstillman Zotero Team
    Any reason why there'd be freezing here, then?
  • emilianoeheyns
    edited November 11, 2022
    I'd have to see a log. I can't think of anything except for first-time massive exports. I still need Zotero to serialize the items before the background export starts, and those are somewhat slow, but I cache and re-use the results, and I yield every tenth of a second in that loop so as to not freeze the UI. And those circumstances should only exist for the first export after BBT was installed (edit: or after a bulk edit of items). But a log should tell me where it happens.
  • emilianoeheyns
    For the record -- @fghinami hasn't confirmed that BBT auto-export was the culprit, just that it was on.

    @fghimai, I'd appreciate it if you could open an issue on BBTs github project. I'd like to know if BBT plays a role here, and my support infra is built around github issues.
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