Keyboard + Mouse Lockup

Hello,
Sorry to hear you are having issues. I have forwarded your problem/question to Stardock Support Team for their assistance. Please keep an eye on this thread for any updates. We appreciate your feedback and patience.

Thank you,
Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant.

That doesn't sound at all good especially if it tells you that it has disconnected as control should be returned to the primary at that point and it sounds like detection of drops is working.

We will investigate further, thanks for letting us know.

Yes, I would have posted the exact contents of these notifications except that when it happens the only thing I can do is ctrl+alt+del to restart.

I tested this...

With control focus on my Win11 64-bit PC, rebooting the Secondary returned control to the Primary after a few seconds.

With control focus on my Win11 64-bit PC, unplugging the network cable from my Secondary returned control to the Primary after a few seconds.

What you might try...

Full uninstall with 'remove settings' from each PC, reboot each, and reinstall.

If that fails, does the same thing happen if you demoted your Primary to a Secondary and vice versa; promote your Secondary to a Primary.  Can you reproduce the issue then?

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

• A full reinstall is extremely unlikely to make any difference, since I'm a relatively new user.  I just installed it very recently, and paid for a license shortly after.  I've had this problem right from the start.
  
  
• Swapping the primary and secondary is not making sense for my setup (the secondary laptop in an inconvenience place)
  
  
• Both of these, combined with such a bad result that requires a full reboot for a machine that I'm constantly working with makes is impractical for me to just try random stuff.
  
  
• So maybe there's some suggestions for a way that I can provide some more information that can be used for finding the cause of this problem.  I'd appreciate that since I really cannot afford random experiments in the spirit of "have you tried turning it off and on again".

We understand if you are unable or unwilling to perform the tests. However, since you are the only one currently having them, it makes sense that we ask you to take some steps to help us find the issue.

If and when you are ready, let us know please.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager  

Good morning,

The TLDR is that it works, but more details:

1. I first disabled the wifi on the secondary (leaving only wired), thinking that maybe the two connections might be causing the problem.  It didn't help: when disconnected, all control (other than Ctrl+Alt+Del) was gone.
   
   
2. I then reconnected, without rebooting the primary.  The screen had the Multiplicity settings on it, and it was showing that the secondary is connected again, but still no control.
   
   
3. When it was in the stuck state again, I flipped the laptop (secondary) to be the primary.  After fiddling with the activation, it looks like things were set -- but [a] the settings window on the primary (desktop) did not show any change, and [b] the laptop could not control the desktop.  (This is probably not worth much, but I just tried it since I moved (physical) stuff around anyway, and I was preparing to reboot + reinstall.)
   
   
4. I then uninstalled Multiplicity on both machines.  I unchecked the "keep settings" checkbox to make it cleaner.
   
   
5. I then re-installed it on both, and noted that at least the encryption key and the secondary password were the same -- so some settings were still saved.
   
   
6. Finally, I connected the two machines again, and looks like it *is* working as it should now!
   
   
7. I did not re-apply the same settings I had, but when I do that, I'll keep track of whether something will make the problem happen again, and will followup.  Note that for saving the settings, I just used screenshots instead of a backup file, in case there was some corruption that got saved with the backup.

OK, so at this point, I'm happy that it's resolved.  [To be clear, I use both machines in two jobs, very actively, so a restart is a long procedure involving multiple components, which means that I'm not someone who thinks about rebooting their machine as much as I think about a burp.]

BUT, the question is whether you should be happy.  You should not....

The thing is that the bug was there, it was real, and since I was the only one that had it live, the chance of figuring out while it was happening is now gone.  IOW, you have a Heisenbug.

In any case, again, I'm happy that it's no longer my problem...

No, it's still getting stuck.

And worse: after yet another restart, running Multiplicity pops up a question like "Do you want to switch to secondary mode?".  Answering no means that it doesn't run.  Answering yes means shows the secondary dialog, and clicking the switch to primary button asks the are you sure question and refuses to switch.

Can I get some reply??  I posted a new thread, and it was killed, I'm trying everything I can but looks like all roads lead back here.

Moderator:

Eli, sorry you're having problems. Your other (second) post can be found here:

https://forums.stardock.com/531570/page/1/#3949082

Anyone?

Please run this on 2 PCs that you have Multiplicity (MP) installed on:

https://cdn.stardock.us/support/uploads/Purge_MP-New.zip

...after the reboot (a must), reinstall, getting the installer from your account page:

https://store.stardock.com/myaccount/products

When setting up MP between the 2 PCs (and only 2 for now, 1 Primary and 1 Secondary), if at all possible, ensure that they are both wired and that neither is wireless-only connected.  Please also ensure that there are no VPN connections at the time of the test.

Lastly, rebooting your router before any tests would be prudent. 

Please post the results of your efforts here. 

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

Could this be a firewall issue?

Under security > firewall > allow an app through firewall

you could try to see if multiplicity is allowed through both public and private networks on both machines

@sdrohan:

• Apologies for the other thread, it just seemed that this one didn't get any replies.  I'll continue here.  To be clear, yes -- the problem is still there.  Since initially it wasn't there, I did a second uninstall+reinstall, and kept things to a minimum (eg, not enabling audio), but the problem was still there.
  
  
• I will do the above and report.
  
  • I actually thought that I can finally install it on another laptop to see if there's anything different, but I'll avoid it for now as per your comment.  I'll also disable the wifi on the laptop so there's a single connection.
  • I do indeed have a VPN on the secondary -- I don't think that I had it on in the above experiments, but I'll ensure that it's not loaded when I do the above.  (I don't think that it would make a difference though, since normal LAN network is fine; also I work for a company that knows how to configure VPNs
  • Same goes for the router, but I'll reboot it to be sure.  (It's a Nighthawk R7000, and I don't have anything non-standard installed on it.)

@PhoenixRising1 -- I did verify that.  I originally had an issue which annoyed MP: my network was in a public mode and I used explicit IPs.  But I made it go back to private, and only used machine names in the recent iteration.

(And a meta comment: please let me know if there's anything I'm doing wrong -- I don't like much these forum things, and even less for bug reports, but many of the Multiplicity features work in a way that makes me very happy compared to others (eg, synergy), so I really hope that I can find a solution rather than revert.  It just takes some time to get to such experiments since I do use both of these machines heavily for work.)

Its not terrible to test it.  I just dont want to be working on multiple PCs at the same time (2 is difficult enough).  If you do test it on the other PC and it works fine, then logic would point us to seeing what is unique about the other pairing that does not. 

VPNs do indeed change the landscape for network traffic ('split tunneling' should be familiar to you if you work in the field) but its normally handled automatically.  Eliminating any active VPN connections is just part of the process of elimination. 

The only other thing we might get into at some point is eliminating IPV6 from the adaptor protocol stack

IPV6 support is new for MP4 and I am not saying it's the problem but we have seen some odd things with it of late.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

After a long gap, because of the pain that this problem induces, I just retried it.

I ran that purge batch file on both my desktop (primary) and my laptop (which is a new one, so there was no real need for it); rebooted both; made sure that there's no VPN; configured the primary first; configured the laptop next; connected them; used seamless mode for the laptop and rebooted it and...

... the exact same problem happened: the desktop is locked.  The only thing I could do on it is ctrl+alt+del and then turn it off (I can start the task manager, but when it starts the keyboard is again unusable).

Let me repeat a previous suggestion: since all software is clearly running, only in a state where the network connection to the secondary is gone, isn't there a way to run it with some verbose log, or have some periodic stack dumps to see where things are stuck.

bump

Hello,
I have forwarded your problem/question again to Stardock Support Team for their assistance. Please keep an eye on this thread for any updates. We appreciate your feedback and patience.

Basj,
Stardock Community Assistant

Have you tried a clean boot on each PC:

https://support.stardock.com/space/SHC/1346601039/Multiplicity+Clean+Boot

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

I did.  It still happens.

For reference:

• I can make it happen more easily by simply disconnecting the laptop's network and reconnecting it a few seconds later.
• Multiplicity does show the popup saying that it lost the connection, but keyboard/mouse inputs don't work.
• Once the laptop is reconnected, it does show the popup about the laptop being reconnected -- but the keyboard/mouse still don't respond (neither on the desktop nor on the laptop).
• The keyboard/mouse are still working, as witnessed by the Ctrl+Alt+Del screen, or by making the machine pop up a UAC dialog.
• Finally, I hacked a script that elevates itself and kills MP2Drag, MultiSrv64, Multipl2_64.  Once I get to the bad state, I run this script (via an ssh which is always running on the machine) -- it will pop up the UAC dialog (and as I said, I can click ok) -- and killing these makes the world sane again (not great, but better than rebooting a perfectly fine running desktop).

Please let me know if there is a better support channel that I can use; a phone number would be great; a proper bug system would be better than doing all of this in a public forum.

Your feedback alone, and our dialg with you, showcases why the forums are the best option for such things.  This will help anyone with similar issues for all time. 

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

Um.... The problem is not the script that I hacked to be able to kill MP remotely.  I'll be happy to share that.

The problem is getting the problem solved.  Sorry for repeating myself, but I did offer running it in some verbose/debug/whatever mode.