Upgrade StorageError report ID: Unknown - copy of error number to clipboard failed
Several points:
1) Regularly experiencing Firefox hanging while doing one of the following (as best as I can remember):
- with highlighting active, after selecting text, the next click causes (often, but not always) Firefox to become unresponsive; check via Task Manager shows Firefox using 100% real time. All Firefox windows become light grey & show the equivalent of the 'hourglass' when the mouse pointer passes over one of them & (I think) after a bit, the Firefox window title bar indicated Firefox is 'not responding.'
- I then typically kill Firefox after a few minutes, attempt to restart it - always find there are 2 copies of Firefox running in the process pane, none in the application pane.
- Of the 2 noted Firefox processes, the older one (i.e. earlier start time & therefore almost certainly the copy that hung) is using 100% of the real time of 1 of the processors (I have a multi-processor machine), even though I had killed it & its descendants via Task Mgr. & all its windows are gone.
- I end up killing both running copies (via Task Mgr.).
- After they no longer show in the Task Mgr. process list, I start Firefox afresh & it runs normally until the above recurs, a day or so later of use which includes some zotero use.
2) In several recent recurrences of 1) above, several times I just took no action for a number of minutes (to see if the 'stuck' part of the software would be done with whatever it was stuck on). I found that after a while (several minutes, maybe even 4 to 5 or a bit more, but I have not timed it) a dialog box opens saying a script is taking too long & offers the choice of terminating that script immediately, or giving it some more time. I think (again recollection not clear enough to be sure) I tried both choices over a series of 1) hangups, and Firefox would start responding again if I gave it sufficient time. I don't recall what exactly happened in cases where I chose to end the script, but almost for sure, I restarted Firefox very soon (so as to not risk zotero data corruption related to the unfinished script).
3) In the case that incited this message, I believe a different manifestation of 'Firefox not responding' occurred while I was using zotero features, specifically (per my feeble memory) creating sub-collections, naming them & in at least one case, renaming a sub-collection. (By the way your spell checker for this entry field flags subcollection, i.e without the hyphen as a misspelling, but the actual zotero program does not use the hyphen, so perhaps the spell checker should be allow the actual spelling used, & by the way zotero also.)
4) I found the 'report a bug' (or whatever it says) link & sent the data. After the data was sent, the report ID showed up, so I tried to highlight & copy it, so I couldn't mistype it, but found that the copy (via <ctrl><c>) did not put the ID in the clipboard. A few other comments & possible issues with the bug reporting, I'll briefly tick off for your consideration:
- The documentation seems to say that the ID has to be posted to a forum, or the bug report already submitted may not even be looked at; that's totally wrong (my opinion); reporting issues / unexpected occurrences MUST be as simple as possible, or people will not be willing to go through the arcane & lengthy series of steps just to try to contribute a bit by giving you detailed (or any) feedback.
- The documentation as to how to do the feedback on the site is at least ambiguous, if not just wrong. (A few examples: the user is told he/she must post to a forum to supply background on an issue, but which of the forums is never indicated, as far as I was able to find. The instructions appear to be slanted towards 'getting help,' but, I was sent into the sequence not because I need help (I can live with it as it is), but am trying to inform you about a probable bug, bugs, conflict with other add-ins, or whatever it turns out to be; that gives the feel of not directing me to the right place.
- The forum names don't clearly indicated which one to post to.
- Apparently, a user has to register in order to post; I couldn't find a way to do so without registering, though I couldn't find any documentation explicitly stating so. That's an extremely discouraging requirement / impediment to place in front of someone just trying as best they can to help with feedback. In my case, particularly, I'm extremely sensitized to expose any information whatsoever at all on the net unless it is absolutely required to fill a specific need that I can understand & verify(even to organizations that claim they will never abuse / misuse personal information, because error, bugs, malicious employees, etc. CAN & DO leak personal data no matter what good intentions the organization promulgates). In my case, for example, I was a victim of identity theft a few years ago; the US Secret Service people involved in the investigation told me to simply refuse to reveal any scrap whatsoever of personal data under any circumstances. In another instance, just about 2 months ago, my credit card company called & informed me that my card was one of a group that (in their works) 'was compromised' & I had to get the account closed immediately; this is some personal experience that even an organization that probably has the most secure infrastructure & process due to the fact that huge amounts of money (not to mention unfavorable publicity) could result from the tiniest loophole CANNOT guarantee misuse / exposure of information. I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO REGISTER AND GIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION JUST TO TRY TO HELP.
I was interrupted several times while entering the above; I'm sorry to say it's likely a bit jumbled & I can't supply a report ID (due to the copy / paste malfunction I had in zotero's error reporting sequence).
But, please do take the above seriously. I believe there are several levels of feedback that may inject a few ways of thinking about user interaction that I hope will substantially improve communications channels and result in a better zotero.
1) Regularly experiencing Firefox hanging while doing one of the following (as best as I can remember):
- with highlighting active, after selecting text, the next click causes (often, but not always) Firefox to become unresponsive; check via Task Manager shows Firefox using 100% real time. All Firefox windows become light grey & show the equivalent of the 'hourglass' when the mouse pointer passes over one of them & (I think) after a bit, the Firefox window title bar indicated Firefox is 'not responding.'
- I then typically kill Firefox after a few minutes, attempt to restart it - always find there are 2 copies of Firefox running in the process pane, none in the application pane.
- Of the 2 noted Firefox processes, the older one (i.e. earlier start time & therefore almost certainly the copy that hung) is using 100% of the real time of 1 of the processors (I have a multi-processor machine), even though I had killed it & its descendants via Task Mgr. & all its windows are gone.
- I end up killing both running copies (via Task Mgr.).
- After they no longer show in the Task Mgr. process list, I start Firefox afresh & it runs normally until the above recurs, a day or so later of use which includes some zotero use.
2) In several recent recurrences of 1) above, several times I just took no action for a number of minutes (to see if the 'stuck' part of the software would be done with whatever it was stuck on). I found that after a while (several minutes, maybe even 4 to 5 or a bit more, but I have not timed it) a dialog box opens saying a script is taking too long & offers the choice of terminating that script immediately, or giving it some more time. I think (again recollection not clear enough to be sure) I tried both choices over a series of 1) hangups, and Firefox would start responding again if I gave it sufficient time. I don't recall what exactly happened in cases where I chose to end the script, but almost for sure, I restarted Firefox very soon (so as to not risk zotero data corruption related to the unfinished script).
3) In the case that incited this message, I believe a different manifestation of 'Firefox not responding' occurred while I was using zotero features, specifically (per my feeble memory) creating sub-collections, naming them & in at least one case, renaming a sub-collection. (By the way your spell checker for this entry field flags subcollection, i.e without the hyphen as a misspelling, but the actual zotero program does not use the hyphen, so perhaps the spell checker should be allow the actual spelling used, & by the way zotero also.)
4) I found the 'report a bug' (or whatever it says) link & sent the data. After the data was sent, the report ID showed up, so I tried to highlight & copy it, so I couldn't mistype it, but found that the copy (via <ctrl><c>) did not put the ID in the clipboard. A few other comments & possible issues with the bug reporting, I'll briefly tick off for your consideration:
- The documentation seems to say that the ID has to be posted to a forum, or the bug report already submitted may not even be looked at; that's totally wrong (my opinion); reporting issues / unexpected occurrences MUST be as simple as possible, or people will not be willing to go through the arcane & lengthy series of steps just to try to contribute a bit by giving you detailed (or any) feedback.
- The documentation as to how to do the feedback on the site is at least ambiguous, if not just wrong. (A few examples: the user is told he/she must post to a forum to supply background on an issue, but which of the forums is never indicated, as far as I was able to find. The instructions appear to be slanted towards 'getting help,' but, I was sent into the sequence not because I need help (I can live with it as it is), but am trying to inform you about a probable bug, bugs, conflict with other add-ins, or whatever it turns out to be; that gives the feel of not directing me to the right place.
- The forum names don't clearly indicated which one to post to.
- Apparently, a user has to register in order to post; I couldn't find a way to do so without registering, though I couldn't find any documentation explicitly stating so. That's an extremely discouraging requirement / impediment to place in front of someone just trying as best they can to help with feedback. In my case, particularly, I'm extremely sensitized to expose any information whatsoever at all on the net unless it is absolutely required to fill a specific need that I can understand & verify(even to organizations that claim they will never abuse / misuse personal information, because error, bugs, malicious employees, etc. CAN & DO leak personal data no matter what good intentions the organization promulgates). In my case, for example, I was a victim of identity theft a few years ago; the US Secret Service people involved in the investigation told me to simply refuse to reveal any scrap whatsoever of personal data under any circumstances. In another instance, just about 2 months ago, my credit card company called & informed me that my card was one of a group that (in their works) 'was compromised' & I had to get the account closed immediately; this is some personal experience that even an organization that probably has the most secure infrastructure & process due to the fact that huge amounts of money (not to mention unfavorable publicity) could result from the tiniest loophole CANNOT guarantee misuse / exposure of information. I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO REGISTER AND GIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION JUST TO TRY TO HELP.
I was interrupted several times while entering the above; I'm sorry to say it's likely a bit jumbled & I can't supply a report ID (due to the copy / paste malfunction I had in zotero's error reporting sequence).
But, please do take the above seriously. I believe there are several levels of feedback that may inject a few ways of thinking about user interaction that I hope will substantially improve communications channels and result in a better zotero.
This is an old discussion that has not been active in a long time. Instead of commenting here, you should start a new discussion. If you think the content of this discussion is still relevant, you can link to it from your new discussion.
I'd like to reluctantly add the following:
- I'm an extremely computer literate engineer who has written a lot of software, including some high-security financial web & backend systems, and have been awarded over 15 patents.
- If I'm having this much trouble, God help those who are computer-phobic & have little to no understanding of what to expect or do in any case other than the few they do regularly.
2) A large percentage of the time, an issue a user is experiencing has already been addressed, and it's pretty standard and reasonable to ask people to follow some basic troubleshooting and searching steps before they ask others to dedicate their time to help them.
3) The only way to respond to the wizard or a feedback form, if people even included contact information (which, when there was the option to do so in the wizard, they often didn't), would be via private e-mail. The community would neither be able to help out nor benefit. In other words, it'd be an extraordinarily inefficient use of our time, and it's time we don't have.
The alternative is our not responding, and, well, sending often-uninformed complaints out into the ether with no hope of a response is what Twitter is for.
4) There's not a particularly high barrier to posting a message to the forums. Anyone who's using syncing in Zotero 2.0 already has a Zotero account. And creating a Zotero account doesn't really require giving up privacy—if you want to stay anonymous, there are plenty of ways to do so. That's generous of you, but if there's a known solution or active discussion, or you misunderstood the issue, or it has nothing to do with Zotero—as was the case with a number of things you mentioned above—then you don't need to "inform" us of anything and you actually require more information, which one might call "help". Useful feedback comes primarily through support requests that reveal actual problems. The main links to the forums take you to the Categories page, which includes descriptions of each. It doesn't really make much difference in practice, though—the people who would help you read every thread in every category. That is (I believe) a security feature of the forum software we use. The message could be clearer, but it only appears if you have an unposted message open for a very long time. And I think clicking Submit again posts the message successfully.
As for your original issue, if you for some reason can't provide a Report ID, telling us what versions of Firefox and Zotero you're running would be a good place to start. Which, incidentally, it says on the Reporting Bugs page linked from the bottom of the Getting Help page. We'll need the filename and line number from the error message.