Gray circle with white exclamation mark on white background

[jdw9113]

We have a digital signage app that uses the flash player OCX as a COM component within a .NET application running on XP and Win 7.   Since upgrading some clients to flash version 10.1.53.64 we are experiencing a variety of issues to include:

1) fscommand calls that are being raised from the SWFs being played eventually stop being raised to (or at least received by) the application.  The behavior is not consistant, and it usually takes a while for this to occur.  Only an app restart seems to restore functionality.

2) Also occasionally insted of the SWF that is supposed to be playing, a white screen is displayed in the flash window.   The screen has a small gray circle with a white exclamation mark in the center.  When this occurs it never recovers - even when a new SWF is loaded.  No errors are raised and the app "thinks" that everything is still going smoothly.  Again a app restart is required to fix it.

We can usually recover from missing fscommands because if we expect a command that never comes, we can restart gracefully.  Issue 2 is more problematic in that its only a visual thing - no errors or other bad behavior seem to be occuring.

Any thoughts of fixes or work arounds would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[chris_s6]

I can confirm the problem of the gray circle with the white exclamation mark on white background appearing at random, usually after hours. We also use the flash player OCX 10,1,53,64 on windows xp.

Any suggestions? What about downgrading or upgrading to 10,1,82,76?

Thanks.

[kin3tic]

same trouble for me

config : XP x64 (fully updated)

IE7 7.0.5730.13 x32 (fully updated)

tested v10.1.53.64

and the latest v10,1,82,76 (still not working)

tested also with shockwave (not) & installed

i've also reformated my hard disk and no more luck with a clean windows install !

screen capture of the icon :

[Guest]

We also get this occasionally with our custom flash app running in digial signage (Rise running in IE8).

We are having trouble finding out:

a) what generates it (is it from Flash, IE, or Rise)

b) what it means

What digital signage platform are you using?

Does anyone know if the exclamation mark from Flash?  I cant find any Adobe documentation/refrences to it besides this post...

Any help would be much appreciated -

[Guest]

Correction - the players are running IE7.

We just spent an hour with Adobe support regarding this issue.  According to Adobe there is no error screen or icon generated by their software that matches the white screen with exclamation point that we are seeing.

Anyone else find a reason behind this icon or resolution?

[O__Esner]

We have the same problem with Flowplayer (SWF video player in embed&object tag, http://flowplayer.org), Firefox 3.6.3, Flash 10.1.53.64. After 3 - 4 days is visible white exclamation mark on white background. We would like to know how to detect this state and restart our swf application..

[jdw9113]

Our product is AdQue.  I have not heard anything from adobe and I also have not tried to reproduce it in the latest version of the flash player.

For the most part we've been able to work around this issue - because fortunately most of our flash assets raise an fscommand to indicate that they are finished playing.  Essencially if we expect an fscommand from an SWF and don't get it in a specific time, we know that flash is hosed and we gracefully restart our app.  Then it works again for a long time until the gray exclamation mark of death re appears.

Don't know of any other way to detect the condition besides occasionally playing an SWF that raises an fscommand or flashcall that tells the app that things are still working nicely.

[dwappes]

I'm having the same problem with my flash site. I did a small update yesterday and that's when it started.  The site went back to normal after about an hour, but its back to the gray circle with the exclamation point again today.

I suspect its an IE problem, as the site is normal in Firefox.

I really hope someone gets this figured out.

[Guest]

Thanks for the additional feedback - it helps in trying to eliminate variables here.

O. Esner had it happen in Firefox - so it appears to not be specific to IE.

The common variables appear to be:

* Windows

* Flash 10.1.53.64 and higher

Has anyone seen this occur on a non-windows machine?  We have only seen this on windows.

I'm wondering if there is any connection with ActiveX...and the latest Flash Player.

[Guest]

Hi, I was just reading this thread out of curiosity since the subject line was so different. Mostly users that are having problems with Flash Player post on this Flash Forum. I have seen many many various errors and have dealt with just as many causes, but don't recall any error as described here.

It seems if any new error would appear, the Flash Player forum would most likely be the first to hear about it

If anyone does post about this, I would let you know. I just thot perhaps this bit of info would be helpful as you are trying to find a solution.

Thanks,

eidnolb

[oeasan]

We are having the same problem. A white screen with grey circle and exclamation mark.

Am running a standalone application wrapped in zinc 3.0 on windows 7. Flash player version v10,1,82,76 although I am not sure if this is applicable to the standalone player.

The white screen with grey circle appears on random time intervals. The only significant actions performed are loading and unloading image's. In my search for a solution I firstly determined that there are no memory leaks. But now I am weirded out too. I can't seem to determine who is mainly responsible, the flash player or windows 7 or a combination. Although I suspect it is the player.

At work we have made many of the same kind of kiosk-like projects and we had many strange bugs but this last one is the most maddening.

I hope the standalone-part is significant extra information, and that someone can solve this!

[jdw9113]

Some more information and to clarify some other questions:

Our Digital Signage software is written in .NET and uses the FlashPlayer ActiveX control . IE is not involved.  Our software runs on both XP (32 bit) and Windows 7 (64-bit) and we have seen this issue on both systems.

Once the exclamation mark appears we don’t get any fscommands from then on.

Also when it happens - it happens on all players.  Our software can use multiple instances of the flash player activeX control for different displays and we also have background players that "preload" some SWFs to determine if they should play.  Once one goes south - they all go south.

Clarification:  When I say all players - I'm still talking about the same executable.  We can display multiple forms each playing a different SWF.  But again only a single EXE and only on 1 computer.  When we restart the EXE, its all fixed.

This event is rare:  In fact we have not seen this happen once in-house - but we have hundreds of systems in the field we monitor and it will happen on a few every week or so.  Now that we are gracefully restarting based on missing FSCommands, it has become a lower priority but one we'd still like to have a fix for.   It only started happening when we went to version 10.1.53.64 of flash.  And we have not moved forward to any subsequent vesion of flash for fear that it will break something else

[Guest]

I was able to replicate the error consistently.

Assignment of a negative value to the length property of a vector seems to cause this.

eg.

var tLines:Vector.<TextLine> = new Vector.<TextLine>();

var value:int =  -1;

tLines.length = value

[RUNd]

Good to know. But since we don't use any vectors in our project,it is also affecting other objects, or zinc (which we use to make an executable) is adding some kind of vector to our project...

[jdw9113]

Very good to know.  We reproduced it here as well with a simple flash test file.

[Guest]

Has anyone had any luck sourcing the problem?

I'm getting the "circle of death" too!

[DavidinChelseaMA]

My HTC Incredible phone just got updated to Froyo, and now has Flash 10.1.

Many flash sites that didn't work before, now work well.

However, I also got the gray and white exclamation point and circle when I attempted to view a panorama on the Star Trek official movie site.

The main page worked. (I was able to activate the navigation icon on the site with my touch screen, with no trouble) but once I clicked on "panoramas," it took me to the page that had the panormas of the Enterprise, and then I got that damn exclamation point.

[Guest]

I'm getting this screen as well.

Windows 7 64bit, FireFox 3.6.8.

It happens after hours of non-stop play.

My SWF does not load any external assets, but it does send and receive a lot of data via NetStream peer-to-peer capibilities. However I've run into the error when the SWF was not ever connected to another SWF, and was running in a local-only mode.

My first guess was that it's a memory issue. I noticed my SWF seemed to be gradually increasing in max memory (using mr doobs stats) although garbage collection seemed to be consistently bring memory back down, it would still increase very slowly. So I decided to let it run for hours to confirm a high memory usage, but instead every time I've tried this and come back all I had was the icon described and attached in this thread. So to me that indicated memory got so high the player stopped running.

Based on the comments on this thread this does seem like something built in to the Flash Player, probably to prevent a full player crash.

[joshdura]

The error you are seeing is the new out of memory notification. It is basically shielding the user when memory usage gets near the system resource cap. The best course of action here (if you own the content) is to check your application for high memory usage and correct the errors. If you don't own the content, it would probably be best to contact the owners and make them aware of the issue you are seeing.

[jdw9113]

Thanks for the update.   Memory issues have cropped up in the past for us.  Most of the occurances revolve around either 3rd party controls, 3rd party content, or SWFs developed in Flex.  Thus many times we don't have control over how they are occuring.  As opposed to just displaying an icon, it would be better if the notification could be event based.   This "visual based" approch does not afford developers any way to detect the condition and take the appropriate action.

[joshdura]

Developers can use the System.totalMemory property in AS3 to monitor the memory usage that the Flash Player is taking up. This iwll allow you to see how much memory is used, where leaks are and allow you to optimize your content based on this property.

[jdw9113]

Unfortunately I am not the developer of the flash.  I am the developer of the digital signage application that plays the flash.  I don't have control over the SWF content - I just use the FlashPlayer.ocx to display it.  We have hundreds of clients that create thier own content - many of them using 3rd party controls and/or 3rd party vendors to create it.  When I say event-driven notification - it would be nice to have an OnError event of the flash.ocx - or something of that nature.  If i received that error I could be aware of the condition and gracefully remedy it...

[Guest]

Unfortunately I am not a computer expert.  Is there any fix that can be explained simply with exact instructions as to what to do??  'Make the corrections' is as clear as mud.  Many thanks and any help is really appreciated.

[Bonyak]

No fix can be explained simply because it is the the game programmer that must stop the leaks and flashplayer. What I am talking about is just a simple fix to clear the overflow of the memmory leak and it is a work around only not  a fix. you can clear the Java cashe and close your browser for the crash and restart the game other than that it is the only solution for users right now. keep updating flashplayer as the udates come out and hope everyone can catch up to the issue so it will stop.

[rexdtripod]

...The error you are seeing is the new out of memory notification. It is  basically shielding the user when memory usage gets near the system  resource cap. The best course of action here (if you own the content) is  to check your application for high memory usage and correct the errors.  If you don't own the content, it would probably be best to contact the  owners and make them aware of the issue you are seeing.

You're not serious with this right?  This is it?  This is all the documentation available on a major revision in how the Flash player works?  This can't be right.

I've had a Flex app out there for two years.  Works fine.  Code hasn't changed in nearly a year.  Ran very smoothly.  Now, all of a sudden, a white exclamation point where my app was and your advice is "check your application for high memory usage"?  What is high?  What's the number?  What am I shooting for here?

And "correct the errors"?  What errors?  Flex profiler is not showing memory spikes.  Nothing drastic anyway.  Whatever was permitted before is now not permitted.  So, what is the new mechanism?  How does it work?  What exactly is it looking for?  There must be metrics by which it decides to shut an app down.  What are they?

And no official announcement?  Just a forum response?

And just an exclamation point?  No error message indicating the precise nature of the problem?  What if when a user requested a page on the web that didn't exist web servers just returned an exclamation point?  How do we debug something with no error message?  How do users know what happened?

What "exactly" is the problem and what "exactly" is the solution?  Adobe, please document this thoroughly.

My apologies if I've missed the documentation.  I'm looking for it.  If I have missed it, could you please point me to it?

Thank you.