Plug-in Crashes

The plug-in is run every time that an item is selected. There are also several other situations when it will be run, for example, when summarising a staff, or preparing the score summary which is shown in your web browser.

Every effort has been made to ensure that the plug-in will work however, it is possible that the plug-in may encounter an error that will cause it to crash.

If this happens a message box will open which explains the nature of the error. This message may not make much sense to you, unless you have some experience in writing computer programs. The message will be something like:
Access//Access::Run:13:Cannot get field NumChildren from a non-object

If this should ever happen, then it is vital that you follow the steps below precisely.

So that you can really get comfortable with dealing with plug-in crashes, a plug-in has been written which will crash on purpose. If you run that plug-in now, then you will be able to try things out as you read through the steps below.

To deliberately crash a plug-in, do the following:

  1. Press Alt+U to open the plug-in menu.
  2. Open the Access submenu, which should be the first option in the menu.
  3. Select the option called “Crash a PlugIn”.
  4. Press Enter to run the plug-in an experience the joy of a run-time error.

How to deal with a plug-in crash

  1. Press Control+` to disable the plug-in. JAWS should say “the plug-in has been disabled”.
  2. Press the space bar to OK the dialog.
  3. After this another dialog opens. This is the plug-in editor itself, offering you the chance to correct the problem.
  4. Do not under any circumstances OK this dialog.
  5. Press Alt+C to cancel the dialog.
  6. If pressing Alt+C does not work then press the Tab key until you hear JAWS say “Cancel” and then press the space bar.
  7. After this, one more dialog opens. This is another part of the plug-in editor. Just press the Cancel button.

You will now be put back in the score.

Because the plug-in has been disabled you will be able to move around in the score without the risk of crashing the plug-in, although the messages that JAWS speaks will be far less detailed than usual.

If you enable the plug-in again, there will be a danger that it will crash if you repeat the action which caused to crash the first time around.

In fact, this is exactly what you should try to do. If you can cause the plug-in to crash a second time, then you should be able to work out exactly what you were doing when it crashed. You can then pass this information on via the feedback form on the MusicAccess home page, which will help us to fix the problem.