Mouse cursor freezes in Windows LabView

Question

I'm developing an application in LabView on Windows. Starting a week ago, one test machine (a ToughBook, no less) was freezing up completely once every couple days: no mouse cursor, taskbar clock frozen. So yesterday it was retired. But just now, I've seen it on another machine, also a laptop.

This is a pretty uncommon failure mode for PC's. I don't know much about Windows, but I'd expect it to indicate that the software stopped running so completely and suddenly that the kernel was unable to panic.

Is this an accurate assessment? Where do I begin to debug this problem? What controls the cursor in the Windows architecture — is it all kernel mode or is there a window server that might be getting choked by something? Would an unstable third-party hardware driver cause this, rather than a blue screen?

EDIT: I should add that the freezes don't necessarily happen while the code is running.

Answer 1

I'd certainly consider hardware and/or drivers as a possibility - perhaps you could say what hardware is involved?

You could test this by adding a 'debug mode' for each piece of hardware your LabVIEW code talks to, where you would use e.g. a case structure to skip the actual I/O calls and return dummy data to the rest of the application. Make sure it's a similar amount of data to what the real device returns. You'll find this much easier if you've modularised your code into subVI's with clearly defined functions! If disabling I/O calls to a particular bit of hardware stops the freezes it would suggest the problem might be with that hardware or its driver.

Answer 2

Hard to say what the problem is. Base on the symptoms I would check for a possible memory leak (see if your LabVIEW app memory usage is growing overtime using "windows task manager").