Keeps crashing with "Error code: Out of Memory" on simple HTML file

[xebico]

I'm on Windows 10, with a good processor, plenty of drive space, and 48GB of RAM. I'm trying to edit a fairly straightforward HTML file with live preview on. Still, every few minutes Phoenix will crash with the same error:

When I say "fairly straightforward HTML file," I mean a single H1 heading and two paragraphs — not even a link!

I'm not running much else — certainly not enough to cause an out-of-memory issue (Firefox with a few tabs and Thunderbird). Task Manager doesn't report a memory issue, either.

I am flummoxed. I tried restarting, of course, but it still happens. Any ideas, or any other info I can provide? Thanks for any insight!

[abose]

That's a totally new first of its kind error report and thanks for reporting!

1. Had phcode been opened any time successfully on the same machine in the past. Did the break happen after installing a windows update or any other software.
2. Does the crash happen in default project as well or only in specific folders. Default project can be opened with file - start project menu.
3. Any other software that uses edge running in the background.

[xebico]

Well this is odd. I can't get it to happen again, although it happened 100% of the time yesterday. I changed literally nothing — no updates overnight, no new software installation. And now the darned thing won't crash. (Until I submit this comment, I bet.)

1. Nope — it started soon after I installed phcode and used it the first time.
2. I opened the default project to test, but as noted above, it stopped crashing as of this morning so I can't answer.
3. Nothing else uses Edge, and I don't use Edge for anything.

My thought right now is that I may have been running something else at the same time yesterday — Discord? Steam? My VPN? If you could leave this post open while I continue testing, I'd appreciate it. I don't want to say it's resolved, but it seems to be working.

Thanks!

[xebico]

Ah! It's happening again — this time when I open the Extension Manager while editing an HTML file in the default project. Not when I try to install an extension — just browsing the list will make it crash. Testing continues....

[abose]

Uninstall by seleting delete the app data folder option in the uninstall dialog, and install again. Is any extension installed. If there is another pc installing it there would help rule out any network related issue.

[xebico]

Uninstalled including the app data folder. Reinstalled and attempted to open an HTML file on my desktop. Crashed immediately. I didn't even get to verify I have no extensions installed!

[xebico]

Incidentally, I wasn't doing anything when it crashed. I had stepped away for a moment with the file open. I also noticed that the HTML preview doesn't always update unless I click the 'refresh' icon — sometimes it's a live update, sometimes I need to click to refresh.

[abose]

Is this a special EU edition windows with some components opted out by any chance. I will create a specail minimal build and share with you tomorrow to help isolate the issue.

[xebico]

Nope, not a special build — just plain ol' Windows 10 Pro.

NOTE: It seems to only happen with the desktop. That is, when I open the desktop as a project because I have an HTML file there I want to edit.

[xebico]

Confirmed: It's something about the desktop. Other folders work fine, but when the desktop is open as a project, it crashes within a minute.

[abose]

That explains, Phoenix code will try to index the opened project as a whole for code intelligence in memory. Usually this is quite small. We have tested projects up to 100,000 code files and it came up less than 1gb of code intelligence index. But usually the index will take about 10mb per 1000 files on average.

If its a very large folder with a lot of files, it will index everything its given. We haven't restricted the index size, maybe we should to prevent oom crash. Can you give a sense of the number of files and the size of the desktop folder to confirm it is indeed the root cause of the issue.

[xebico]

The desktop itself only has about 20 items — mostly shortcuts — but three of them are folders with subfolders and files, so there are easily several hundred files (assuming Phoenix Code is also looking in subfolders). That would explain the memory issue. If there's a way to tell Phoenix not to look in subfolders it would solve the problem.

It's a shame — sometimes I want to edit a standalone HTML file that's not part of a project, and I wish I could preview it.

Thanks for your help, and I'm glad we were able to figure it out!

[abose]

Not allowing standalone HTML previews from ramdom folders was a security restriction we had to place to prevent directory traversal attacks. This vulnerability could allow malicious actors to access sensitive files outside the intended project by exploiting the file path and send it to remote servers. We had to add that restriction to prevent that attack, and unfortunately that meant disabling standalone previews.