WeatherCat crashed after long period of operation - now won't restart

[A. Bridge]

I have had a sudden failure of WeatherCat. It crashed and now crashes when I attempt to restart it. I have downloaded a fresh copy of the software from the net and it starts, very briefly displays the expected windows and then crashes. The windows are visible for less than a second.

How to procede?

[elagache]

Dear A. Bridge and WeatherCat troubleshooters,

Sorry that this is the occasion of your first post, but let me welcome you to the WeatherCat forum.

I have had a sudden failure of WeatherCat. It crashed and now crashes when I attempt to restart it. I have downloaded a fresh copy of the software from the net and it starts, very briefly displays the expected windows and then crashes. The windows are visible for less than a second.

How to procede?

A good first guess is that your WeatherCat preference file has gotten corrupted.  The problem occurs often enough that we have instructions on how to deal with it on the WeatherCat Wiki:

https://wiki.trixology.com/index.php?title=How_to_create_and_use_a_backup_of_your_WeatherCat_preferences_file

If you don't have a backup, you can use any other backup source such as what Time Machine provides.  Whatever you do, make certain to follow the restore instructions very carefully.  The problem is being caused by a dubious macOS preference caching mechanism.  You must insure that your previous copy doesn't get overridden. 

Let us know if this solves your problem.

Cheers, Edouard 

[A. Bridge]

Alas, this did not solve the problem. Still crashes. I have attached the crash log here. I went back to a long-standing copy of the pref file using Time Machine. I saved the original file, deleted the dubious one and did a full shutdown and then restarted. No joy.

[elagache]

Dear A. Bridge and WeatherCat troubleshooters,

Alas, this did not solve the problem. Still crashes. I have attached the crash log here. I went back to a long-standing copy of the pref file using Time Machine. I saved the original file, deleted the dubious one and did a full shutdown and then restarted. No joy.

Sorry to hear that.  Your problem sounds very similar to another WeatherCat user as reported on this thread:

https://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=3453.msg33130;topicseen#msg33130

Try power-cycling your console.  That means removing the batteries and the AC adapter and allowing the console to sit for a significant period of time (~5 minutes.)  Before doing this, attempt to retrieve any rainfall data from your console.  WeatherCat uses the Davis console data for rainfall.  If you record the rain you can manually reenter it after you have WeatherCat running once more.

Let us know if this solves your problem.

Edouard

[A. Bridge]

I solved the problem by deleting the preferences file and restarting WeatherCat. It stayed alive so I was able to re-enter the details. It appears to be working well. I have made a copy of the pref file in its working state to save in case something else goes wrong.

[Blicj11]

I love it when a WeatherCatter figures out a solution. It sounds to me like your original backup copy was also corrupted. The backup copy you now have should save you some frustration in the future. We don't know why that specific pfile gets wonky, but most of us have experienced having to replace it sooner or later, and it sure is a quicker and more convenient fix when you have a clean backup.

[A. Bridge]

WeatherCat clearly needs to handle this sort of failure more gracefully rather than simply crashing. If there's an issue in processing the plist that can be reported without a system crash. It's even possible to report the stage at which the problem happened.

Leaving the end user to rummage through the crash logs is neither elegant nor good programming practice.