The SAS Viewtable window freezes or crashes the SAS session on Windows


The SAS Viewtable window might freeze and/or crash the SAS session when you scroll to view the data in the window.

The issue is a conflict between the SAS Display Manager (DMS) environment and how Microsoft handles the display of windows in modern versions of Windows. Very few updates have been made to how SAS DMS functions, and there have been very significant changes to how Microsoft Windows handles displaying windows on the desktop. These changes use more modern techniques and offload more processing to the graphics hardware.

The concept of having multiple scrollable windows within a single application workspace (which is what the SAS DMS does) is not a common application behavior. As a result, conflicts can occur between Windows and SAS that cause issues.

Recommendations

Method 1: Windows Performance Settings

Bring up the Windows Performance options:

The most significant improvement in the behavior of the Viewtable window occurs when you turn these options off. (Note that this workaround typically does not solve the problem, but it should reduce the frequency of the issue.)

Method 2: Use Microsoft Process Explorer to Resume Suspended Threads

Download the Process Explorer via the following link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer#download.

Then, complete the following steps: 

  1. In Process Explorer, right-click sas.exe and select Properties.
  2. In the Properties panel, click the Threads tab and then click the TID column.
  3. Click the first item in the list. In the bottom of the panel, look at State:.
  4. If the State says Wait:Suspended or contains the word Suspended, a Resume button should be displayed.
  5. Click the Resume button.
  6. Use the down arrow key to check the next thread state.

There will be only one suspended thread at a time. Once you find and resume all threads, SAS should unfreeze. If SAS does not recover, search for another thread with the same issue.

Method 3: Use the SAS Universal Viewer Instead of the Viewtable Window

The SAS Universal Viewer is an external application that enables you to view SAS tables. You can download the application via the following link: https://support.sas.com/downloads/browse.htm?cat=74.