This bug was already fixed once:
http://fold.it/portal/node/750249

Maybe the re-appearing has something to do with the earlier fix of the bandwidth problem?

the reconnect button sounds like a good idea. many people have issues with the chat dropping out.

I also noted that up- or downloading recipes does not work when connected a long time.
Could be the same problem.

I've been wire-sniffing the in-game IRC connection. At a certain point the client sends an IRC chat message and the server's TCP stack responds with a reset, indicating that the server terminates the TCP connection. At this point the game client crashes. Programming the game client to handle the TCP connection being closed would be an improvement. Adding the ability to reconnect to IRC after that happens would be even better.

It looks as if a load balancer or firewall on the server end is running low on resources and dropping TCP connections. Allocating more resources to the load balancer and/or firewall could cut way down on IRC disconnects and resulting game crashes, even if time is not available to fix the game client.

I have experienced quite a few more crashes since the last update (which may be coincidence) when foldit has been left running even with just a single client, like today.

The external IRC connection is maintained, although of course I loose the connection to the group chat.

Also I am getting 'foldit not responding' and slower load times on puzzles, even smaller ones.
Running Win7 64bit on i7, no system changes or other software installed during this time, bandwidth supplier unchanged although consistency of the ISP supply may of course be a factor.

In the last couple of days, ive played foldit on my old dualcore amd running XP and my laptop which is win7 64bit on i3.

I had no crashes etc on either and dual core was left on overnight at least once, lappy used about 5 hours at a time.
I did find 514 slow to load on both

I had ingame chat continuously also..but that could be a fluke lol

bumping up... hopefully we can figure out what is going on with this.

This is probably a client problem, not server.

It appears this problem only happens in Windows (or at least not Linux). Working on debugging windows now.

Thanks for all your help. This should be fixed in the next release.

Sorry to reopen this...

Some of my team members are still having frequent crashes as of today, 2-18. It's possibly tied to the running of more than one client.

I'll add my frequent crash report here.

Running dev (beta) client on Win XP SP3. On any of the larger puzzles we're doing now, leaving a recipe running for a few hours will almost certainly result in a C++ Runtime error dialog box, client window stays open and visible until the dialog box is acknowledged, then the client window goes away. However, the foldit.exe process is active and visible in Task Manager, using lots of memory, but no CPU resources.

Are these crashes related to the IRC connection being lost?

Folders, please do following test to check that connection loss cause client crash:
- open ONE instance
- ensure that chat is working
- disable network adapter or simply unplug network cable
- wait few second
- press blue "i" in chat window
- try to type in chat window
There should be a pop-up "unable so send message" or similar. Client should not crash.
If it crash please save log.txt file and attach it to reply.
If it not crash close it and open again to get working chat :)

crashed

After disconnecting from wifi, was still able to click blue "i" button without problems. Typing "test" in chat caused it to crash immediately.

Seth fixed my problem. Had an old build.

Right, this fix has been confirmed in the developer preview but it is not yet released to the main version.

This fix has gone out in the most recent update.