Anyway, I have this problem 2 times. The last time I had lots of Metro apps opened and trying to log off, and after the error, I still have few Metro apps running. That's the only clue I have.

37 minutes ago,cbae wrote

Microsoft really needs to rethink their decision to do away with the close button in Metro apps. In my Windows 8 virtual machine, I have up to 2GB of physical memory allocated (I know it's low, but I have two 2008R2 VMs running too). I was checking out the sample Metro apps, and I must have launched 3 or 4 of them. The memory demand shot up to about 3.5GB. Windows slowed down to a crawl, and the UI was completely unusable (I couldn't even launch Task Manager) until the running apps somehow shut down by themselves.

yeah i think by rtm they will have to add a "close button" "charm" to the standard set for the times when you really do want the app to close.  for example if the app is not working quite right , not totally broke but just has a problem and you do not want to re-start or go to the desktop to find taskmanager. 

29 minutes ago,figuerres wrote

*snip*

yeah i think by rtm they will have to add a "close button" "charm" to the standard set for the times when you really do want the app to close.  for example if the app is not working quite right , not totally broke but just has a problem and you do not want to re-start or go to the desktop to find taskmanager. 

You don't have to go to the desktop to find taskmanager, just CAD then click Task Manager, it even opens over the Metro display.

But I have to heavily disagree with the idea of adding explicit Close functionality to Metro apps, because it misses the whole point of having system managed application lifecycles. As the user of a computer it shouldn't ever be my responsibility to manage system resources just to keep the computer happy, I paid for an operating system to do precisely that. Also, like providing synchronous API calls, it encourages application developers to be lazy; the process of saving state and documents gets left till application shutdown,rather than happening automatically.

It may not (currently) be ideal in VM situations, especially those which allow over-commiting RAM, but that's hardly a reason to get rid of it. VM authors will fix their behaviour and users running on physical hardware will get the best experience possible.

Apps that "need to be closed because of a problem", for example, should just be shut down automatically. IIRC this is how it's supposed to work already, so if it's not, that's a bug.

This solves 2 problems as currently to switch between apps you have to swipe endless amount of times to find the application you are interested in. It will also be quite a familiar experience to people using iOS.

40 minutes ago,jgd12345 wrote

This solves 2 problems as currently to switch between apps you have to swipe endless amount of times to find the application you are interested in. It will also be quite a familiar experience to people using iOS.

Well you don't, you can just go back to the Start screen and click the app you want to switch to.

C

3 minutes ago,AndyC wrote

*snip*

Well you don't, you can just go back to the Start screen and click the app you want to switch to.

Imagine if you had to go to the Start menu (and possibly into the All Programs Menu) to switch to another already open app in current versions of Windows.

But sadly, your suggestion is the currently the only reliable method of switching between Metro apps in the Win8 dev preview because Suspended apps disappear from the Alt+Tab (or is it Win+tab) ring, resulting in infuriating bouts of "where did that g*d*mn app go, I JUST had it open!", and much shaking of fists.

Of course, the alternative; to leave all apps in the Alt+tab ring results in an overflow of apps you used once days (or months) ago, making the feature useless for switching between current tasks. For example, my iPhone task list has 37(?!?) apps in it (viewable 4 at a time). I only ever use that list to kill off misbehaving apps for that reason (or sometimes I get OCD and kill them all).

24 minutes ago,AndyC wrote

*snip*

Well you don't, you can just go back to the Start screen and click the app you want to switch to.

Then why have the 'swipe from left' task switching at all?

I agree with jgd12345 - the (dare I say it) iOS style of closing apps would be nice.

For my own app, I've been playing with a custom gesture - place all five fingers on the screen to grab the app, move your fingers closer together as though you are screwing up a ball of paper, then throw the app to the left or right will close it. Sounds horrible in explanation, but it's quite a natural thing to do. Of course, this won't work if someone is missing a finger or thumb, so it would fail in accessability roles!

1 hour ago,Charles wrote

Provide the Need-A-Close-Button feedback on the Win8 forums! (I bet somebody already has). The Windows engineering team spends time there (not here, really).

C

I would, but that would just be jumping on the dogpile.

3 hours ago,evildictait​or wrote

What do you mean by "Memory error"? Do you mean a crash? A BSOD? If so, what error are you seeing?

It is not a BSOD. It is a window pop up saying the memory is gone or something. And I was login off (first time, with lots of Metro apps) and shutting down (second time, soon after cold boot, I was just turning on to put my Win7 DVD recovery disc to be honest. I just login and shutdown.).

4 hours ago,AndyC wrote

*snip*

But I have to heavily disagree with the idea of adding explicit Close functionality to Metro apps

So what you are saying is, the app that can be run on the background and playing a loud music should never be closed explicitly by user?

This is not Mango where apps has limited multi-tasking ability. The Metro apps has all the background capability as any desktop app, which will keep playing annoying loud music until you terminate them in task manager.

(Anyway, this is rather off-topic. Because I am talking about memory error in regards to Metro apps' reliability. Meaning I am more concerned Metro apps can be unsafe without using the "unsafe" keyword. .Net apps are a lot safer unless you are specifically mark "unsafe").

6 hours ago,cbae wrote

 The memory demand shot up to about 3.5GB.

Don't ever run Weather, it takes about 150MB and it will run without ever going into suspension.

4 hours ago,magicalclick wrote

*snip*

This is not Mango where apps has limited multi-tasking ability. The Metro apps has all the background capability as any desktop app, which will keep playing annoying loud music until you terminate them in task manager.

They don't have all the background capability of desktop apps. They are suspended when put in the background and can't do anything. Background audio and downloading via BITS are pretty much all they can do and the behaviour of audio is dependent upon whether it's a game, communications or music app. It's certainly not ideal in the current build, but don't confuse buggy behaviour with the ultimate intention of the OS.

(Anyway, this is rather off-topic. Because I am talking about memory error in regards to Metro apps' reliability. Meaning I am more concerned Metro apps can be unsafe without using the "unsafe" keyword. .Net apps are a lot safer unless you are specifically mark "unsafe").

But there is no evidence they can be "unsafe", you can't even remember what the error message you actually saw was. Maybe you hit an OS bug or maybe a driver had issues. At this point it's all a bit anecdotal because nobody really knows what it is you're talking about. 

4 hours ago,magicalclick wrote

*snip*

Don't ever run Weather, it takes about 150MB and it will run without ever going into suspension.

It will be suspended after a while, though it does seem to take an unusually long time. I think the background suspension code might still be a bit work-in-progress as there were a few demos at Build where things didn't quite suspend in the way they should. i do have to wonder why Weather and Stocks seem to consume so much memory and CPU for what seem to be fairly simple apps. Bad intern coding or deliberately written to stress test the system?

1 hour ago,AndyC wrote

It will be suspended after a while, though it does seem to take an unusually long time.

either way, it still takes 150MB regardless which state it is in, which was the main problem what cbae had, running out of memory.

As for "Limited multi-tasking"? (edit) nvm, this is really not my topic.

(Anyway, this is rather off-topic. Because I am talking about memory error in regards to Metro apps' reliability. Meaning I am more concerned Metro apps can be unsafe without using the "unsafe" keyword. .Net apps are a lot safer unless you are specifically mark "unsafe").

Well that's because Metro itself isn't built in .NET, it's built in C++.

Also Windows 8 is independently pen-tested by lots of private sector and public sector organisations both before release and after release (that's where a lot of the critical security patches come from), and crashes on customer computers are reported via WinErr to Microsoft for fixing too, so I wouldn't be too worried that these crashes on the Win8 beta are going to lead to your computer being compromised.

And anyway, where did this "I didn't use unsafe therefore my program can't crash or experience memory corruption" mentality come from? It's easy to make .NET crash without using the unsafe keyword, or even worse, the "It's .NET therefore it's unexploitable" attitude (which in my experience is the opposite of the truth - you try making a dummy vulnerable C program and see if you can exploit it, and then try making a dummy vulnerable ASP+SQL program and see if you can exploit that, and tell me which is easier to do).

2 hours ago,magicalclick wrote

*snip*

either way, it still takes 150MB regardless which state it is in, which was the main problem what cbae had, running out of memory.

Windows 8 immeadiately kills suspended processes if it needs the memory, so that isn't an issue unless you're running in a VM and it is pretending there is more physical RAM than there really is available. I really recommend everyone watchthis session, because it explains a lot about the model behind Metro apps and why it doesn't need a close button.

55 minutes ago,smithduluth wrote

I've had a memory error pop-up also, both times it said unable to read memory location with an address displayed.

yeah, I think that's pretty much what mine said. Please share the details when you get the error again. Thank you.

interesting, I wasn't able to push over 100% RAM myself. I didn't have enough Metro apps to test it out. I didn't use desktop app since that wouldn't the same. Anyway, personally I don't like this below, from both CPU and Memory usage of a simple Metro usage.

And Black Screen of Semi-Death.