CubeMX UI is messed up (again, again and again...)

[Luiz Pereira]

Despite referring to the STM32F0 label (can't this forum have a simple one labeled as a general problem for STM32CubeMX???) the problem exists for ALL situations and MCU's where you simply start working with the STM32CubeMX.
Since several years ago, some colleagues on this form (and myself for 1-2 months) continue to report a completely stupid mess in the stm32CubeMX that makes it completely useless (again I attach a picture of today's nonsense and that completely prevented me simply from doing my work at the University - I'm sick of it!) No one at TS has (apparently) spent even a minute trying to solve such a stupid problem. For now (and against my will) I will migrate to NXP MCUs, which at least the configuration software works! As soon as someone at ST fixes the problem (which drags on for years!) please let me know.

[Diane POMABIA]

Hello @Luiz Pereira 

What is your local version of cubeMx ?

For your information, all reported tool bugs are taken into account by our teams and resolved in future versions.

Regards 

Diane

[Luiz Pereira]

Hi

Unfortunately it occurs in all situations and versions I know (6.7.0, 6.8.0, 6.8.1, 6.9.0 and 6.9.1) and as far as it is reported, the problem has been going on since 2018, that is FIVE YEARS!

No matter PC hardware/software (test on Win11, Win10, always up to date), graphics cards GTX1660/GTX370 (latest drivers), display resolutions from 1920x1080 up to 2560x1400, regardless of Java runtime version - not SDK - (currently the version 8 64bit update 371 but the same happened with the previous ones). Clearly it's a STM32CubeMX problem and specifically a serious UI rendering bug that simply (and autonomously i.e. without requiring user intervention) starts to draw the GUI, window after window randomly on the monitor (and usually always a few minutes after starting the software). It is independent of any other software that is open in Windows.

Simply put, the STM32CubeMX is useless for configuring complex MCUs, as is my current case (it was "bearable" for small things but now it's frustrating).

The most annoying thing is that apparently in these five years, nobody has cared about the matter.

Thanks

[Herve PIERROT]

Hi @Luiz Pereira,

First, thanks a lot for the interest you are bringing to our STM32 MCUs and our associated software development tools.
And sorry to hear about your bad experience you may encounter with STM32CubeMX, and I fully understand such issue can be frustrating and for sure impacting your work. But for such issue, the main issue is the duplication of the issue in other environment, and even if it may be hard to believe, as it was reported by several users, it is absolutely not systematic and it was not fixed yet because not reproduced yet in our side. If we could find a way to systematically reproduce it, it may offer the possibility to study the issue and fix it.

So what can be clear is that it happen in very specific circumstances with specific HW (PC, Monitors) and specifics Windows settings.
Did you notice this post answering to similar issues where the setting of the display size configuration (probably talking about font size and display scaling) seems to help in that case ?

https://community.st.com/t5/stm32cubemx-mcu/my-cubemx-ui-is-messed-up/m-p/571509/highlight/true#M25330

Maybe same could help in your case too. Sorry to not be able to help you much more than that as myself, I'm also not able to reproduce the issue.

Last point, you mention that you where not able to select "STM32CubeMX" label for your post. In fact it may happen this label is not proposed by default in the list of selectable label, but you can always type it manually in the text box that list the labels of your post. Lot of post in teh forum are already tagged with a STM32CubeMX label.
But I agree with you that this label should be listed in the default list as should be one of the most used in the forum.
Sorry, my bad, there is a limitation with our new forum, I will check to get this label available.

Hope to have bring you some tricks that could help you to use STM32cubeMX more conveniently.

[Luiz Pereira]

Hi,

Thanks but, no way. There is no viable solution. The problem lies in the GUI engine of the STM32CubeMX (the remaining HW/SW on the PC should not be relevant as in the other situations mentioned, the configuration is almost different!). Furthermore, any viable software must not (in any way!) depend on the HW/SW of the machine where it is expected to run. As I recall, during my Windows software development, these GUI issues are related to the condition of the PAINT window (similar procedure using Java or similar mechanism) and not dependent (in well-made software) on the HW/SW layers present in the device drivers (these only process instructions from the top level SW!). Eventually, some particular HW/SW situation can trigger the problem but it should NEVER happen if the GUI engine was correctly programmed and tested on the system. From what I remember, in the old days when the STM32CubeMX depended on Java RTE to work, this never happened...

I appreciate when a real solution will be made. Meanwhile (at the expense of delays but working) on CM7 MCUs I switch to NXP iMXRT as I can't wait any longer to finish the job as the STM32CubeMX is completely unusable (only for very simple systems, like 20/32 pins CM0 I can use it).

Thanks for the attention

   

[Pavel A.]

>The most annoying thing is that apparently in these five years, nobody has cared about the matter.

Tend to agree with @Herve PIERROT that this is something dependent on specific graphic card(s) in your company - or some software that tampers in video card operation (especially the "security", "compliance" crap, spying on employees...)

I've never seen this myself. If it were a frequent problem it would be already fixed.

[Luiz Pereira]

I'm sorry but I don't agree at all. And it doesn't make sense (the problem is noticed by users of Nvidia and Radeon graphics cards). The fact that a user has (apparently) worked around the problem by increasing the font size (i.e. forcing CubeMX to a different rendering process) shows this.
As I mentioned, I believe that there is any process that can trigger the problem but in a well made SW, this should never happen (and in more than one user and with different HW configurations). Also, as I mentioned, it didn't happen when CubeMX depended on Java RTE...
I would add that on my PC (personally, I'm the administrator) I don't have games, graphics productivity software, etc.); unless some windows update is responsible.
For now, I just want to finish what I'm doing and I don't need comments that don't suggest a solution.
Maybe when I have time, I'll try to see what's going on.
Thanks

[Paradox0v0]

Hi,

I encountered the UI chaos problem too, I have searched this problem with Google, and this problem seems to be a common situation obviously! I asked my classmates, they said they had the same problem. I tried different GPU drivers (My GPU is RTX3090), tried different versions of Cube MX, and tried to change the resolution of the monitor, and these methods were all USELESS! 

I use two monitors(resolution is 3620x2036) during my work, and I found if I turn off one monitor, the chaos UI of Cube MX could be solved. but when I tried to use two monitors, I encountered this problem.

Thanks

[Luiz Pereira]

Hi @Paradox0v0

In fact, this problem becomes very complicated. As I pointed out before, no matter the changes/settings of display (I'm now using one with a resolution of 2560x1440, but I've tried with different monitors with lower resolutions) and GPU (Nvidia GTX1660 or older), different PCs (intel i5, i7 and i9 from 4th to 12th generation) and the problem persists. I have no solution and some proposed workarounds didn't work for me. The only computer I have where CubeMX works is my laptop (lenovo, i7 7th gen, Intel graphics), but that's not really usable.

Clearly, the problem began to be noticed when CubeMX started to have its own Java RTE replacement module. Before that, it worked without any problems.

Until now, I still work with NXP MCUs. We'll see if any real solution can be found.

Regards

[Pavel A.]

#bugreport  @mattias norlander @Markus GIRDLAND  @Diane POMABIA @Herve PIERROT 

 

[mattias norlander]

I have asked some colleagues about the complete status - as we know it today. We have never been able to re-produce this on our side --> Difficult to fix. I am normally not monitoring the CubeMX product, but if this was a common problem I imagined that I should have seen it, given the 100s if not 1000s of installations I have seen...

 

---

Paradox0v0 wrote:

I encountered the UI chaos problem too, I have searched this problem with Google, and this problem seems to be a common situation obviously! I asked my classmates, they said they had the same problem.

---

@Paradox0v0, could you share the links to these other common situations to see if we can find more pieces in this puzzle?

 

@Paradox0v0 @Luiz Pereira , do you represent the same university? Would be interesting to know the commonalities of your IT environments... Specifically, what kind of anti-virus/firewall, scanning services that are running on these systems. Is it possible that one of these tools perceived the MX bundled JRE as some type of threat? Could you run MX together with an IT-administrator and disable any protection applications running on the system to see if you re-produce the same behavior?

If I understood well, MX runs well for a few minutes, than boom. GUI is messed up. Sounds to me like a periodic service destroying the MX environement. Could you find in some administrator log-files on the system which service/tool that is invoked and potentially messing with MX?

 

Kind regards, Mattias

 

[Paradox0v0]

Hi @mattias norlander,

I am a Chinese developer, So I tried to search this problem in Chinese and English with Google. There are some links (But there written with Chinese):>

cubemx软件显示问题_嵌入式-CSDN问答

https://blog.csdn.net/DYahsc/article/details/130667222?spm=1001.2101.3001.6650.3&depth_1-utm_source=distribute.pc_relevant.none-task-blog-2%7Edefault%7ECTRLIST%7ERate-3-130667222-blog-127741550.235%5Ev38%5Epc_relevant_yljh&utm_relevant_index=4 

https://blog.csdn.net/qq_44125275/article/details/127741550 

https://www.zhihu.com/question/595379695 

https://tieba.baidu.com/p/8005588651 

https://shequ.stmicroelectronics.cn/thread-636768-1-1.html 

I uploaded my chaotic Cube MX UI in attachments too. When I tried to type some words in the search window, the UI must be chaos.

 

[Pavel A.]

From the mentioned 3rd party software, Origin seems interesting: it is a gaming thing; naturally it may mess with the GPUs. Suggest to start testing from pristine PC setup (or "Microsoft Signature Edition" setup, if this is still available). Then install 3rd party software. Check BIOS settings related to video memory, PCIe...

[Luiz Pereira]

Sorry @Pavel A. 

Origin is MicroCal's OriginLab, software for scientific work! And why would there be problems with the desktop and not with the laptop when it is installed and working on both (and with the same versions and configurations)?

[Paradox0v0]

Hi @Pavel A. 

My classmates' situation is similar with @Luiz Pereira . They are graduate students and major in electronic information engineering. So their computers installed some software for scientific work too. And by a very coincidence, we encountered the display issue with the laptop too, but when we used desktops, this problem disappeared.

Regards

[Pavel A.]

@Paradox0v0 But @Luiz Pereira has opposite situation. His laptop is OK and desktops have problem ?? 

(we are talking about Windows 10 or 11 64-bit everywhere, correct?)

Again I'd recommend to test on a 100% clean fresh Windows installations. On laptops this can be harder because of all the vendor preinstalled junk.

 

[Paradox0v0]

Sorry @Pavel A. , My expression may lead to confusion. What I mean is some of my classmates encounter this problem when they use desktops. And yes, The OS on my laptop and desktop are all Windows 10.

 

[Pavel A.]

> Finally, it would be interesting to know what software STM programmers have on their PCs when developing the STM32Cube...

+1. They don't have MCUXpresso, I guess))

And the same question to you @Luiz Pereira  - have you or your colleagues tried to install and run the Cube on a pristine Windows machine? 

[Luiz Pereira]

Hi @Pavel A. , @Paradox0v0 ,

 

There are interesting news (!)

1) Today I had to make changes in an old project (developed about two years ago) in the STM32IDE and it was necessary to reconfigure peripherals in the MCU. I opened the STM32MX (within the STM32IDE) and when I realized, I was able to work without any problems on the STM32MX for at least 30 minutes. The UI problem only appears when a popup window is presented - see figure in attachment; other than that, it works perfectly!!! (as a comparison, running the STM32MX alone, I can only work without problems in a maximum of 5 - 10 minutes...). I didn't have time to test it for long periods of work (just in case) but in the next few days I will try to do that. We will see if this new paradigm can be interesting or not.

2) Yes, I plan to test the STM32MX (alone!) on a pristine Windows machine. Just to avoid having to format a current PC (and then having to install everything again), I will use one of the new PCs that should be delivered to the laboratory next week (the software image provided by the University has only Windows 11 and Office 365). It's the "cleanest" I can "get".