Tablet PC bug gobbles resources; Microsoft says to reboot

Given the huge success of Microsoft's Tablet PC Edition of Windows XP, we somehow expect that not a lot of you will care about this, but we'll share the news anyhow: A bug in the OS causes the Tablet Input Panel (the process that handles pen input) to steadily increase its use of system resources until there's nothing left for other apps. Until a fix is available, Microsoft's helpful advice is to reboot daily. We can offer some even better solutions, but we think you have a good idea of what those are.

[Al @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

Ah, gotta love the default Help Desk response to issues with Microsoft apps...

"Reboot!"

[Donoho @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

I Love my Tablet (Toshiba M200) Damn It! I will admit I've always felt this should not be a seperate product. All screens should eventually have this capability. Pen (or other) input devices should be syncable like bluetooth mice (does that plural hold true). I think it should be part of the flat panel spec. Start off with a USB interface and eventually incorporate it into the cable itself.

[Permanent4 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

One of those solutions wouldn't involve Ballmer's lips and your ass, would it?

[mac diehard @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

no, most probably his lips and Jobbs' ass.

[PXLated @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

What's funny is Scoble's response...(not a quote)..that it's wise to shut down your PC once a day anyway, he does. :-)

[Pat @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

I too love my TabletPC, a Motion M1300. Don't knock 'em until you've tried one for more than five minutes. I use mine for everthing from Photoshop to accessing my Mac mini using VNC. Oh, and I have not had a problem with this bug even with the TabletPC being rebooted about once a week.

[Marc Orchant @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

Hey Marc:

All kidding aside, the fastest way to correct the memory leak is to kill the tabtip.exe process and then relaunch it by tapping on the TIP icon on the task bar. No need to reboot... or have horrible and potentially permanent psychic scars caused by picturing Ballmer's lips near anything!

And hey, the blog space is all abuzz because Microsoft acknowledged there's a problem, that they're fixing it, and... they don't know when it will be fixed or how the fix will be released.

Sheesh! Talk about a "slow news day".

[Marc Orchant @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

Hey Marc:

All kidding aside, the fastest way to correct the memory leak is to kill the tabtip.exe process and then relaunch it by tapping on the TIP icon on the task bar. No need to reboot... or have horrible and potentially permanent psychic scars caused by picturing Ballmer's lips near anything!

And hey, the blog space is all abuzz because Microsoft acknowledged there's a problem, that they're fixing it, and... they don't know when it will be fixed or how the fix will be released.

Sheesh! Talk about a "slow news day".

[Martin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

This explains why my Econ professor's Start Menu took 5 minutes to display on his Toshiba tablet during yesterday's lecture. As expected, a quick reboot fixed everything.

[Lite @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

3 finger salute time.

no, not ctrl-alt-del

F** YOU MSFT!, F** YOU MSFT!, F** YOU MSFT!

how a company can make money with such major failures like this is incomprehensible.

[FabreNZ @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

See guys, even Microsoft can get bugs in their software.

Oh, wait...

[Carmi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

When we find a software vendor whose software doesn't have ANY bugs, that will be news. Frankly, given the complexity of today's OSs - including Windows AND Linux - and the fact that they must run on all manner of cobbled-together hardware, it's a wonder that they work at all.

Endless Microsoft-bashing for the sake of Microsoft-bashing gets pretty tedious after a while. This kind of leakage-related error has been identified in virtually every version of Windows since 1.0. What else is new? Moreover, why should we care?

Carmi Levy
http://writteninc.blogspot.com

[Kevin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

I have a M200, too. Love it. This platform is giong to revolutionize computer graphics. There's nothing in the world like Painter or Photoshop on a tablet PC. (tablet technology in the screen is provided by Wacom.) Bummer about the slow leak, though.

[aprodite @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

{{Re: Marc Orchant
The fastest way to correct the memory leak is to kill the tabtip.exe process and then relaunch it by tapping on the TIP icon on the task bar.}}

If that's true, surely M$ can create a small app/script that does that automagically, maybe every time the machine awakes from sleep, or once every x amount of hours (obviously it should check that there's been no input for a few minutes)

As far as I can tell that would "fix" the problem untill they can solve the "memory-leak"

I know if it was a Mac I could write an AppleScript to do it, but having no idea about PC's would VB-Script work?

[Vic Healey @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

Yes it is a slow news day and all this Microsoft bashing shows me there are hundereds of crazy people who still hear those voices in their heads.

No one has mentioned that FIREFOX, which is beloved by many including myself, has a serious memory leak that gobble up all your memory as you browse the Internet. And that isn't even a Microsoft product. Memory leaks are a fact of life when one makes a programming error that is hard to find.

[Julian @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

I generally run my tablet (Fujitsu T3010D, 512mb ram) for weeks at a time (usually 4, up to 8) and usually have 80 processes running, and I have never had any problems with tabtip.exe. Maybe I'm lucky?

[Chris C @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

Two items...

Just heard about a jet liner that aborted take-off at the last second, just before lift-off, taxiing to a stop just off the runway. Everything inside the cabin went dark for a few moments, then powered back up. Captain came on the loudspeaker and announced that they'd encountered a computer error during take-off and aborted. He said they had rebooted and were now proceeding back into take-off position. I would guess that Mr. Gates & Mr. Ballmer were not seated in First Class.

Second... anyone ever thought about the number of person minutes spent waiting on reboots? My mantra... "The world waits on Microsoft!"

[TabPCMan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

How come no one wants to talk about the fact that from V1 the Tablet OS has been VERY stable? How come you don't want to talk about all the great new apps coming out for tablet. How come? Jeesssshhh, give me a break. You "IhateMicrosoftandamgonnacomplainabouteverylittlething" people are just plain jealous of a hugely successful company that puts out great products. Are their products all bug free -- NO. Is ANYONE's product bug free, plus useful, affordable, etc.? NO.

I would list all the good points of the Tablet OS but we'd be here all night.

Thank you Microsoft for a great OS superset release. I for one will be patient with this SMALL bug.

[ElCapitanAmerica @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

> #14 Memory leaks are a fact of life when one makes a programming error that is hard to find.

Maybe MS can use their own managed code technologies to avoid the constant repeating of the same bugs over and over and over (ie leaks, buffer overflows, etc)

I find it amusing that people defend a company unleashing defective products to the rest of the world. I get the point that bugs happen, I write software too so I know that, but after you get so many brain dead bugs and security flaws in your product, don't expect people to be happy about it.

[Naquada @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

>If that's true, surely M$ can create a small app/script that does that automagically, maybe every time the machine awakes from sleep, or once every x amount of hours (obviously it should check that there's been no input for a few minutes)

Guys, thats what I did through a script I found at tabletpcbuzz.. I've listed it on my blog here... http://www.naquada.co.uk/archives/000265_tabletpc_tip_leaking_memory.html

it kills both tabtip.exe and tcserver (the main culprit!) andd then restarts tabtip.exe, when you use the TIP it will automatically then restart tcserver.exe, sinces its a simple little script you can schedule it to run once a day, since I hardly ever shut my tabletpc down unless I'm flying long distances.. My record for tabtip.exe is 112meg usage!!

[Chris De Herrera @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

Well before the flap went public, I wrote the memory leak up on Tablet PC Talk. I did so because some vendors are selling Tablet PCs with 256 MB of ram. So if the TIP eats up a significant amount of ram, it is a large issue for those customers. Of course if you have 2 GB of ram you can afford to ignore it for awhile longer.

[Darren Platt @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

I couldn't live without linux or my M200. I think it's a close race as to which of thunderbird, firefox and tcserver grab most of the 1/2 Gb of RAM on my laptop. Thanks for the info, I'm relieved to hear this isn't expected behaviour. There are tonnes of great tools for tracking mem leaks, use them guys. sqlservr always hold the record. what the f*ck do I need a whole sql server for to run a desktop ?

[JT @ Dec 19th 2005 1:38AM]

My tablet is a Fujitsu Lifebook T4010 and I experience the same memory problem. I'd like to know if the leak can be entirely solved with the following update:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c4eebb54-14e3-408e-8c63-0a382e8d9239&DisplayLang=en
Please reply