This is just an FYI to the devs. I’m on a plain vanilla Windows 10 x64 PC with the latest updates to that and the latest version of RootsMagic v10 (as of yesterday).
I imported my old RootsMagic v7 family tree. This has no extras eg media files or pictures. Just names, the standard facts, and notes. The program and the tree are both on the same solid state drive in the PC on my desk - no cloud or network involvement whatever. And I have no anti-malware installed other than the built-in Windows Defender.
I needed to delete a lot of people. After doing a dozen or so, I began to get access violations. Soon every deletion would get a violation. So I’d shut down RM and restart it. After a couple of deletions the Access Violations would start again. I must have cleared 200 of these.
So, again just FYI, there is a problem with the program, not with the hardware or system arrangement.
Using Win 11, I have experienced RM Access violations when I select a person in the Index and then scroll thru names occasionally performing edits on people and then continuing to scroll. After doing this for many people an access violation occurs. I then terminate RM10 using Windows task manager and restart RM 10. I don’t know this error is related to your experience but it may be similar. I’ve observed this violation many times even in RM 8-9-10. It doesn’t seem to do it as much lately. It’s hard to recreate the issue I’ve experienced but it still happens occasionally.
Both the situations you all have described are what I like to call “RM getting tired”. It’s obviously not really getting tired. It’s just that after working in RM for a while, especially if you are doing the same sort of task over and over again, it will trigger an Access Violation Error. It’s repeatable in the broad sense that it always happens sooner or later. It’s not repeatable in the narrow sense that you can predict exactly when it’s going to happen.
I frequently get Access Violation Errors when using the back chevrons in Descendant View to move a person up a generation. It’s not 100% repeatable when I test, but just now it was 100% repeatable. One thing that helps it along to be repeatable is for the person first to be highlighted in People List View and then to switch to Descendant View. Another thing that helps it along to be repeatable is for the highlighted person in Descendant View to be a person without children or a spouse, and then to switch to Descendant View so they are the only person in the view. Then try to use the back chevron to move Descendant View up a generation.
I have always suspected memory leaks or some sort of communication failure between multiple threads where one thread is picking up a message from another thread and the message is not there anymore, or some combination of the two. My guess could obviously be way off. But at least in the my case of back chevrons in Descendant View, I don’t have to wait very long to get the problem. My main workaround is not to use the back chevrons in Descendant view. I have always suspected that the problem is not in the actual RM code, but rather is in some libraries that RM is using. Otherwise, I would expect that the problem would have been fixed by now. And this part of my guess also could obviously be way off.
This is a known problem since abt version 8.3-I was also deleting a lot of people and kept getting an argument out of range error-- usually abt every 40 minutes or somewhere between abt 670- 1000 clicks…
info from Support It’s very clear by your description that you are receiving the argument out of range error coming from the list manager. Development is working on this issue. It can take 100’s of clicks before you see it. While working in the index and deleting individuals the error is being triggered. Like you said it can be somewhere between 670-1000 clicks. This error will not damage your database at all. You will need to close RM after you receive this error to clear it. Otherwise you get meaningless errors, most often the access violations errors message. The biggest thing is it annoying, but not harmful. We appreciate your patience while development works through this issue.
So the work around was to shut down RM and restart before the error happened BUT as Mad Dog said , you can delete whole groups in RM 10-- haven’t tried it — I think I would try it on a test copy of your database to see what happens–also think I would make smaller groups at least at first instead of one great big group–just make sure to have a Back-up before you start and Back-up periodically…
My big deletions are done. I could set up a test of what you say but unless the devs are actively interested (from history it looks like they aren’t) there’s no point. And as I’m not the only one with the problem I think they can replicate it themselves. It doesn’t take “100’s of clicks”.
And even if grouping works, the average user would have no idea to do that - they’ll just slog through as I did, figuring that it must be “their system” since otherwise it would have been fixed long ago.
But thanks for your replies and trying to be helpful. You have more patience than I do with paid apps that are well over ten years old and still have serious bugs (and more minor shortcomings).