Copy issues in Pro 3.5.1 to 3.5.4 AND 3.6 - help diagnose

[RTPL_AU]

Hi everyone,

Please help me diagnose this issue.

Edit - Issue ongoing in 3.5.2
Edit 2 - Issue ongoing in 3.5.3
Edit 3 - Issue ongoing in 3.5.4

Edit 4 - Issue ongoing in 3.6

In another 'Issues with Pro 3.5' thread I mentioned a copy issue that has raised its head since installing 3.5 and now 3.5.1

Local support has not been able to replicate this yet but another user has had it happen to them in this Community.

Problem:

For some reason, Pro will start to hiccup when you copy anything.
With copy I mean Right-Click>Copy or CTRL-C

As you can imagine this covers a lot of ground - copy selected text from a layer name, attribute table, popup, or copy a layer in  a map, copy a layout item, etc.

It will start as a short freeze and if you ignore it, it will progressively get worse until you get all the Pro open windows & panes going black for a while, and at some point it will crash hard, to the point where Windows freezes for a minute or two. I've never had Windows fall over completely.

If you restart Pro and reload the same project it will work fine for a while, until it starts again. This is quite disruptive.

It started on the first project I worked on after installing 3.5.

Nothing else on this computer exhibits the same issue.
Computer has been restarted a few times 🙂

I don't use Clipboard History or any clipboard plugins. No user account stuff is synced via OneDrive. OneDrive  for Business is used but as a device to PC sync tool and no project data touches it.

Diagnostic Monitor shows the 'Suspend + Resume' pair when you copy some objects, as expected. If Pro freezes, the DM will show 'Unresponsive' and then carry on with no further messages when it becomes responsive again, until you click or do something for it to log again.

The only AddIn I have is XTools Pro.

It does not appear to matter how simple or complex the data, layout, or project is.
My data is mostly FGDB and I use local state basemaps & services, AGOL Atlas layers, basemaps, etc.
I can create an empty project, add a layout and add text & boxes & stuff to the layout and if I carry on long enough the bug will surface - without any data loaded into the project at all.

This is a Windows 11 Pro machine that is near 100% stable in all other aspects. It is reasonably up to date - I lag a bit on feature updates to be safe but security updates are up to date.

I've run Process Explorer but without a targeted concept to search for it is a very deep rabbit hole. Going through the Pro logs & dumps is just a crazy volume of stuff

I've set Pro to clear the cache when you close it.
I've reset and recreated my customised Quick Access Toolbar.

The Pro config was removed/recreated recently to troubleshoot something else (which wasn't solved) but I can't reset everything every time there is a bug - I have to work to make money to pay for the licenses 🙂
Not sure how the Pro config intersects the Copy process - maybe there is a new setting in Options I missed?

Anyone have some ideas we can use to narrow this down?

[DavidLeggett]

took 1 for the team..

[ChrisUnderwood]

OK, thanks. And does that reveal any pattern to those who do/don't see the problem. For example, does it only occur with Windows 11, or only with .NET 8.0.16 ?

If there is no apparent pattern, this thread would still benefit from a more prescriptive set of steps to reproduce the problem. For example, Layouts seem to be mentioned a few times, are they essential to initiating the problem ?

[RTPL_AU]

Hi @ChrisUnderwood 
It can happen in any part of Pro - not just layouts. 

I've spent some time updating every part of my system as far as feasible.

On .Net 8.0.18 now and no change in behaviour.

I am getting the impression that it is most likely to get triggered by copying a layer (i.e. copy a layer from one map to another).  This may just be a numbers thing as I have done a lot of that type of copying today. 
Workflow example - I'll have two maps. One in a Layout and another to edit & do data things so I don't yeet the pretty one used in the layout. Once data is useful I'll copy the layer to the layout's map. In a day I'll be copying symbology, lots of text from other sources, values from tables to add to text in an email or report, values from a def queries into a Notebook, etc. Once it starts nothing other than a Pro restart fixes it.

As it started occurring immediately after the 3.5 install, your developers must know what they've changed in this part of the app. Go to whomever owns that part of the code and ask them what they changed? 

[Melissa_B]

I reverted back to ArcGIS Pro 3.4.4 since I couldn't handle all the performance problems in 3.5, but I just had ArcGIS Pro lock up and go black trying to copy the name of a map.  I had a text element from a layout sitting in my clipboard that had a dynamic text tag in it. Selected into the map name just fine to highlight it, used the mouse to right-click > copy the text, and the whole software had a meltdown where the UI locked up and the main window went black.  Took it maybe 20-30 seconds to figure itself out. Maybe I missed it in the older versions or attributed it to something else (my previous computer seemed to have some electrical problems, fried multiple hardware components, and had to be retired).  

Either way, thought I'd note here that I'm seeing copy issues in 3.4 on a desktop workstation with an Intel i9-10980XE CPU, 64 GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 with the newest display driver as of last week. I don't have enough control over this company computer to do any in depth diagnostics or testing so I'll just try to note when it happens with what was in the clipboard and what I was trying to copy. 

[Melissa_B]

ArcGIS Pro 3.4.4 stopped accepting all input and had to be taken down via Task Manager after trying to copy text in a popup after having a map frame from a layout sitting in the clipboard. Keyboard shortcut to save the project was ignored. Keyboard shortcut to open the diagnostic monitor also failed. Task manager showed no disk usage, no network usage, and no GPU usage for ArcGIS Pro but still showed changes in the amount of CPU activity on it. I gave it 5 minutes to think about it, but it didn't appear to be thinking about anything at all. I was also able to copy text in Chrome with no issues while waiting to see if ArcGIS Pro would become responsive again.  If this were a Windows clipboard issue, I would imagine copying text elsewhere would also be causing problems.

[Melissa_B]

ArcGIS Pro 3.4.4 stopped accepting all input again after trying to copy text in a popup with a group of layout items sitting in the clipboard (text element, scale bar, map frame). Once again, ArcGIS Pro wouldn't respond to the mouse or keyboard and had nearly no activity showing in Task Manager. No messages indicating a software crash and Windows doesn't report the software as not responding.

[Melissa_B]

ArcGIS Pro ignored input again after copy operation.  Tried to copy text from a popup - dynamic text tag was sitting in the clipboard before that.  Just to note for clarity: I am not using Windows clipboard history. I am recalling what I last copied before the failed operation.  I have also been able to successfully copy text from the popup in the same project with the same dynamic text tags copied in the same session with no issues. 

Edit: tried to find a way to make the software functional again when it's in this weird state but the entire UI is unresponsive. Opening another project didn't fix the non-responsive project and it's like I can't give focus to the project anymore. The popup window closed itself (as in completely not that it collapsed to the side) before it locked up. Closing the project with task manager opens a brief dialog asking about saving the project before it all goes down without time to interact. 

If anyone has a handy keyboard shortcut or method to get ArcGIS Pro out of that state, it would help a lot to not have to either save before every copy operation or risk losing work.  I was really hoping reverting to 3.4 would help efficiency given how buggy 3.5 was, but I must have underestimated how bad off 3.4 is. It's interesting that now it's locking up completely with no indication that it's working on anything when previously it would just blatantly say it's not responding or would bring down Windows Explorer with it.  Display cache when I brought the project back up was only sitting at around 500 MB since I've been closing and clearing the cache about every hour for safety.

[Melissa_B]

Same thing again: went to copy text in a popup - had a layout element grouping with a text element, scale bar, and map frame in it sitting in my clipboard - Pro UI became completely unresponsive with the popup pane vanishing after trying to copy the text.

I kept diagnostic monitor up the whole time to try to catch something. Here's what I've got: the diagnostic monitor window stayed responsive. I can't copy and paste information from diagnostic monitor because the copy function is no longer working in Pro and in fact is not working in any other software while the broken Pro instance is running.  Diagnostic monitor has "unresponsive" in dark red under Status. So clearly Pro knows it's not working but hasn't communicated that to Windows and has no activity on it's end showing in diagnostic monitor - no tasks are being completed, no threads are shown as working.  Diagnostic properties shows the last command being esri_core_saveProjectButton which would be because I saved right before trying to copy the text that I needed.

After closing ArcGIS Pro via task manager, my copy function on the rest of the computer started working again just fine.  I would love to know exactly how Pro is programmatically handling clipboard operations.

[Melissa_B]

Had the same behavior with Pro no longer responding to input after copying a legend element with a patch graphic sitting in the clipboard.

[RTPL_AU]

Local reseller has not been able to replicate and has asked for a skip-ful of logs & dumps. 
I've not had time to create a sanitised project and environment so that I don't bleed commercial-in-confidence data without knowing. 

Anyhoo - the most likely workflow to cause the issue is to have Pro open for a bit and then to copy a layer or layers from Contents. Other copy operations may trigger it but a Contents layer copy almost guarantees it.

It doesn't always happen immediately in a fresh instance of Pro, but almost guaranteed to make it happen once Pro has been open for a while and you've done a few things in it.

I've updated everything I can on this machine (.net, GPU and GPU drivers, NIC drivers, etc.)
NGL Pro runs worse now in general than before doing all the 'get the latest drivers'  that everyone recommends without blinking. (See other Idea about Esri providing a curated list of major driver & OS versions that they have tested and know work 100% with Pro  https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-pro-ideas/instead-of-just-giving-a-blanket-response-of-quot/idi... )