Trouble of GDI+ generic error!

[James Wong]

Hi everybody,

I'm facing a serious trouble relating to GDI+ generic error. The error
message is "A Generic error occured in GDI+" and the following information
is stored in Excepton object:
System.Drawing. Graphics.CheckE rrorStatus(Int3 2 status)
System.Drawing. Graphics.DrawSt ring(String s, Font font, Brush brush,
RectangleF layoutRectangle , StringFormat format)
System.Drawing. Graphics.DrawSt ring(String s, Font font, Brush brush,
PointF point, StringFormat format)

In my application, I use DrawString to print text on printer. This is a POS
application in retail store and one receipt is printed every minute in rush
hours. The symptom reported by user is the program stop response or no
receipt is printed after 3 or 4 hours operation during rush hours. The
above error message is logged by my appliction. After reboot the machine,
it works normally again for another few hours.

I suspect the problem is caused by memory corruption but no idea how to
trace to source. The suspects are:
1. my code
2. GDI+ / .NET Framework
3. hardware (e.g. insufficient RAM)

I've also tried to add some GC.Collect() code in my code but there's no
improvement at all.

Here is the hardware / software configuration to run my application:
1. Intel Celeron 2G with 512MB
2. Star TSP 700 printer
3. Windows XP Professional with SP2 and latest patches
4. .NET Framework 2.0
5. SQL Server 2000 Desktop Edition with latest patches
6. Application compiled by VB.NET 2005

Would anybody have any idea how I can trace the source of this problem?
Thanks a lot for your attention and kindly advice!

Regards,
James Wong

[James Wong]

Hi Steven,

I still have something not quite sure about when I should call Dispose. The
followings are some pseudo code to show my question:
Public Shared Sub A()

Dim objFont As Font

objFont = New Font (...)

Call B (objFont)

' I should call objFont.Dispose here before end of the sub, right?

Call B (New Font (...))

' if I call sub B in this way (without creating a variable), how can I
call Dispose?

End Sub
Public Shared Sub B(ByVal objFont As Font)

'... do something here with objFont

' Do I need to call objFont.Dispose here before end of the sub?

' I'm not quite sure that objFont in this sub is an independent instance
from objFont in Sub A

End Sub
And you may right that I use a lot of font objects to print and this may be
the major cause of my problem.

Thanks again for your help!

Regards,
James Wong
"Steven Cheng[MSFT]" <st*****@online .microsoft.com¼ ¶¼g©ó¶l¥ó·s»D:N c************** **@TK2MSFTNGHUB 02.phx.gbl...

Hi James,

For those graphics objects such as Brush, Bitmap, Font... they will hold
win32 unmanaged resource handle, thus, whenever you have used large number
of such objects and haven't explcitly dispose them at ealiear time,
they'll
hold significant operating system resource(GDI handles). Therefore, you're
recommended to explicitly dispose them after finishing use them.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Thanks for your reply james,

Regardingon the those managed GDI+ objects(such as Pen, Brush, Font ....),
you're recommended to dispose it rigth after you've finished using it (in a
certain GDI+ function call such as DrawXXX). Generally, you can consider
put the object disposing code at the end of the certain function which
perform a GDI+ task.

In addition, here is a GDI+ FAQ article about when to dispose object:

#Disposing of GDI+ resources
http://www.bobpowell.net/disposing_of_resources.htm

and there are many other useful faq articles on GDI+ there:

http://www.bobpowell.net/faqmain.htm

Hope this also helps.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[James Wong]

Hi Steven,

Thanks for your information! I've modified my code and the situation seems
to be better than before. I'm still monitoring the performance and behavior
of my new style coding. I'll let you know if this solve my problem
eventually.

Regards,
James Wong

"Steven Cheng[MSFT]" <st*****@online .microsoft.com¼ ¶¼g©ó¶l¥ó·s»D:9 s************** @TK2MSFTNGHUB02 .phx.gbl...

Thanks for your reply james,

Regardingon the those managed GDI+ objects(such as Pen, Brush, Font ....),
you're recommended to dispose it rigth after you've finished using it (in
a
certain GDI+ function call such as DrawXXX). Generally, you can consider
put the object disposing code at the end of the certain function which
perform a GDI+ task.

In addition, here is a GDI+ FAQ article about when to dispose object:

#Disposing of GDI+ resources
http://www.bobpowell.net/disposing_of_resources.htm

and there are many other useful faq articles on GDI+ there:

http://www.bobpowell.net/faqmain.htm

Hope this also helps.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi James,

Glad that you've got progress on this.

Sure, if there is anything else we can help, please feel free to post here.

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

[Steven Cheng[MSFT]]

Hi James,

Have you resolved the issue or still anything need our help?

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.