MediaLab freezes, running on Vista

[braseg]

Further information based on our efforts to figure out what is going on:
a) The program locks up after a certain number of responses have been made, regardless of how many experiments are run. I.e., somethings (Vista?) is tracking the total number of responses. We can run through a whole experiment that is lengthy but not long enough to reach the lock up point, then start another experiment and the second experiment will lock up quickly as it reaches the lock up point (based on the total responses across both experiments).
b) If we run an experiment, close MediaLab, and then run a second experiment, the total number of responses factor resets to zero.

[jarvis24]

This is really useful information. I agree it certainly sounds like some kind of memory issue--especially if closing and restarting MediaLab allows for the "count" to reset. My only remaining question is whether this also depends on some specific content in the experiment (i.e., a 3-way OS x #Items x Content interaction) or a simple 2-way OS x #Items interaction. Without seeing the content of your questionnaires I can't say. But one way to tell would be to administer a 200 item questionnaire, with the most basic content possible--say 200 instruction items. I've attached such a sample que file. Would you mind running it on your system and see if the result is the same?

[braseg]

The 200 item questionnaire freezes right after instruction item number 156 (every time, for three consecutive trials).

[jarvis24]

OK, that's hugely useful info. I don't think I asked you this yet--is this happening on multiple machines or is it unique to this single Vista machine?

[braseg]

The same thing happens on every Vista-loaded machine in the lab (n=8)

[Jasper Wijnen]

We have the exact same thing. 6 Vista laptops. Medialab freezes after item 150 or so. The experiment runs fine on any XP PC. When the sequence of questionnaires is changed Medialab will freeze on a different trial. Splitting up the experiment in 2 parts and restarting Medialab between the 2 sections resolves the issue.

[EDONNY]

We are experiencing the same problem in our lab on our vista computer. We seem to have maybe gotten further than item 150 (though I am not sure exactly how many items were complete), however, we experience the same purple freezing screen. If we do the exit code immediately (ctrl,alt,right arrow) we can save the data we have accumulated so far, but if other buttons are pressed, we have to ctrl, alt, delete out and lose all data. The funny thing is that we are experiencing the same problem with a machine that came with vista, but was later switched to XP??? Is it something about the vista computers and not necessarily the OS itself???