scan v7.5 messed up

[dian]

i have learned long ago not to play around with this fragile software and not to touch any of the setting adjustments. but yesterday i nevertheless decided to change the black logging screen to white (to be able to print screen). while that was successfull the following happened:

- pids (f8) is empty
- data (f9) is empty
- dashboads c is blank
- chart properties is empty. i can click on an empty space and a pid appears, but scale/font are empty and wont accept any input.
- other stuff stopped working, e.g. display ... (f1) opens some unrelated adobe document.
- time stamp disappeared

closing and reopening a file doesnt help, same thing. all new files are like that. previously open log-files i didnt touch work as usual.

i then attempted the same on another laptop and weirdly enough exactly same thing, the newly opened files are useless.

what happened? what can i do to make the logging software work again?

[Highlander]

7.5 is not fragile. It is complex. You can always open your dash pages or just delete your documents\efilive\v7.5 folder and start from scratch.

I would suggest you copy that folder somewhere else so you can move things one by one and then just copy what you need like calc-pids and the such.

Also, V7.5 is no longer supported, while it still works wonderfully the new software is v8. It is more powerful and nicer after you get used to it.

[dian]

so after investing some time i was able to fix it. what had happened is that in my attempt to get the screen white i apparently set the font to white and it became invisible. i had done dashboard/recall instal. default/reset ls1 and it did nothing (no idea what that does). so now i found edit/properties/recall and that fixed it. so upon further investigation: edit/properties/display/color can set it to black again.

usually if i messed with the "complex" (nice word for it) settings and something like that happened i just opened a new file for logging and forgot about it. in this instance, however, this didnt help, all newly opened files were affected, i wonder why that is.

short tutorial (maybe it helps some other "occasional user"):

change font color: edit/properties/display→color
change screen color: right click/chart properties/chart→color
change frame color: right click/dash settings/backgroung color→color

(just because you mention it: loading dashboard/dashpage has never worked. the software saves it but cant find it again, sais "file empty". i have been putting up with this for several years now. maybe one day, if i have nothing else to do, i find a solution even for that.)


edit: "change screen color" only changes the main screen, the y-axis fields stay black. if anybody can explain how to change those, please do.

[Blacky]

edit: "change screen color" only changes the main screen, the y-axis fields stay black. if anybody can explain how to change those, please do.

change y-axis color: right click/chart properties/Y-Axis (left)→color
change y-axis color: right click/chart properties/Y-Axis (right)→color

Regards
Paul

[Blacky]

(just because you mention it: loading dashboard/dashpage has never worked. the software saves it but cant find it again, sais "file empty". i have been putting up with this for several years now. maybe one day, if i have nothing else to do, i find a solution even for that.)

I just re-tested the V7.5 save dash page and save dashboard options and they seem to work fine. What seems to be the problem?

P.S. I recommend using the V8 software, the dashboards are much easier to manage, save, import and export between users.

Regards
Paul

[dian]

the problem is: the software does not find the files it saved. it sais "file empty". this has been the case for 7 years and on 5 different devices/computers (or more).

(i updated the software twice and will never do it again, as it has worked worse every time and required considerable effort to get it running again. while i never had problems on the tuning side im glad to have it logg at all but will first consider getting some other logging software should i have to update it again.)

[Blacky]

the problem is: the software does not find the files it saved. it sais "file empty". this has been the case for 7 years and on 5 different devices/computers (or more).

It sounds like you are not really interested in resolving the issue you describe.
If you are actually interested in getting the problem solved, let me know and I am more than happy to help you get it working correctly.

Regards
Paul

[dian]

yes, please let me know what could be done about it. it doesnt matter if i save to a stick or the hard disc. (its not that im not interested, but rather that the time/effort i can put into it is limited.)

thanks for the tip about the color change. it worked as you said. the problem here is that most of the other items in the list seem to be doing nothing.

and while im complaining: right click/chart properties/font in dash "c" only changes the size of the numbers on the y-axis. the label and current value remain the same. (for years i thought this did nothing, now i see it changes the size between 8 and 12 only, maybe its going to be different next time.) in dash "b" its the other way around, the font chages the current value and label, the y-axis numbers stay the same. iv had instances where i enlarge one and the other shrank down to invisibility. can anything be done about that?

(im sure you understand that in view of such and similar behaviour of the software the occasional user finally gives up trying to get a grip on it.)

[Blacky]

All the various colors change correctly when I tested it this morning.

Which ones exactly do not cause any change? If you mean the "hatch" colors, then that could be because the hatch color is the same as the background color - in which case you'd need to change the hatch color to be different than the background color and select an actual hatch pattern - not just black.

The X-axis font is simple and straight forward, just change that in the Chart Properties [Chart] tab page using the "X-Axis" [Font] button.
If you enlarge the X-axis font you can make the X-axis vertical size larger by increasing the X-Axis Size so that the large font fits in the X-Axis.

The Y-Axis font is a little different. By default the Y-Axis font is set to "Auto-Size" which means it will grow/shrink to fit the amount of text required to be displayed, down to a minimum of 6 points and up to the maximum of the font size set for each Y-Axis. If you change the width of the Y-Axis using the Size (left) and Size (right) options (or change the chart's actual size) then the Y-Axis fonts will enlarge or shrink to allow the text to fit.
The size of the value is determined by how many digits you specify. The more digits you specify the smaller the font (if it is set to Auto-Size).

On the [Series] tab page you can set each of the four Y-Axis fonts to "Auto-Size" or not.
If they are not set to Auto-Size, then the font you have selected will be used at the size selected and the text will not change size, but it may get truncated.

When you select the actual font using the [Font] button for one of the series (i.e. one of the Y-Axis) you can replicate that same font name and size (not color) to each of the other 3 series using the [Copy] button. It just saves entering the same font 4 times for each different series.

The format option allows you to specify additional decimal points using the standard "C" format string %.xf where x is the number of digits you want displayed after the decimal point. So for 2 decimal places you would specify %.2f for 0 decimal places you would specify %.0f

All of that is explained in the documentation on pages 126 and 127.

-------------------

As for the saving/loading of dash pages and/or dash boards, I'm really not following what the problem is that you describe.

If you save a dash board as a file, are you saying that when you select the "Open dash board" option the software can't find the file that was previously saved? Or are you saying the when you select the file that was previously saved the software says that the file is empty?

Regards
Paul

[joecar]

Hi dian,

If you do proceed doing uninstall folliwed by reinstall, then before reinstalling delete the EFILive folder(s) under My Document or under Documents.

[dian]

blacky, please help me with this, while i (maybe still) have your attention.

i spent over a hour of quality time in an attempt to get font size equal. e.g. if i open the pre-existing "ls1" dashboard in dash-c, unfortunately the y-axis fonts have different sizes. the inputs for the four series are different. so after a while i found out that y-axis font sizes depend on:

- font size you input
- width of the x-axis (this "auto-shrinks" the size)
- if split checked

i nevertheless didnt manage to get them equal.

first picture: i made all inputs for series 1-4 identical except for split checked for series 4. despite the box showing the size as equal (input is 28), in reality it will be whats on the screen: series 3 and 4 size is larger. what to do about it? second picture: its possible to shrink the size with the y-axis width, but the four elements shrink in a different way, depending on their number of positions. i got series 3 about equal to 1 and 2, but series 4 is larger.

i was going to attach two printscreens ("first" and "second picture" above) but apparently they are the wrong format (odt) so i cant. maybe the situation is clear anyway, if not i can try and convert them somehow.

o.k., here they are, sorry, no idea how to do that better.

[dian]

and, btw, the exercise ended like this (second picture): screen was blocked. when i opened another version of the scan tool it looked like the first picture, screen blocked. so i dont know if i permanetly f.u. the software on this computer or if that is somehow going to normalize. (this is why in my tuning binder the first page sais in red: "do not touch the settings".)

[Blacky]

blacky, please help me with this, while i (maybe still) have your attention.

Like this?

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To achieve that, uncheck the "Auto size" check box for all four series.
Set the number of digits to 4 for each series (that controls the font size for the value).
Set the font size to 20 for series 1.
Click on the [Copy] button to copy the font name and size of 20 to the other three series.
You will need to make the y axis larger horizontally to accommodate the fixed font size.

Regards
Paul

[Blacky]

and, btw, the exercise ended like this (second picture): screen was blocked. when i opened another version of the scan tool it looked like the first picture, screen blocked. so i dont know if i permanetly f.u. the software on this computer or if that is somehow going to normalize. (this is why in my tuning binder the first page sais in red: "do not touch the settings".)

Those errors have nothing to do with the V7.5 setup or configuration.

Windows keeps a list of system resources that it has to manage on behalf of a program running on the computer. A system resource is a number (a pointer to an object) that uniquely identifies a resource being used by a program. Resources are things like, images, buttons, menus, windows, toolbars etc. If a program creates too many resources that can cause Windows list of resource to fill up - then you see the "Out of system resources" error.

You can monitor the system resources used by a program using this application: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon
If, as you use V7.5 those resource numbers keep going up and reach 10,000 then you will get "out of resource" errors.

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I know I've said this before, but I actually recommend using V8 instead of V7.
V7.5 was designed back when Windows XP was still a thing. It has limitations (and quirks) that have been addressed in the V8 software.

Regards
Paul

[Blacky]

You can monitor the system resources used by a program using this application: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Actually you can just look in these columns for the resource usage for each program:

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Regards
Paul

[Blacky]

You can monitor the system resources used by a program using this application: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/procmon

Sorry, that was the wrong link.
This is the correct link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

Regards
Paul