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Well.. The Server app crashed the first time I tried to use it, but it's been ok since.
No useful details, except it was mandelbulber2.exe that crashed.

On the Client end, however, crashing has been almost constant as soon as I click Render on the Server end.
One workaround I find is to disconnect the Client and connect again, repeatedly as necessary, until a particular "Warning" stops appearing in the info window - please see attachment for details.
As long as connecting doesn't produce the warning, clients seem to work fine. Using two laptops as clients, and it appears the same on both.

I have no idea what to do to reproduce similar error. I have tried many times under Win 10.
Is it always happen? If you restart PC is it happens at first start of application?
What steps should I do to reproduce this problem?
Have you tried to disable firewall?

Yes, after restarting Client machines, it happens at first start of the application. Sometimes, multiple instances of the same error. Three in the attached example, and I counted 15 on another machine. Number sixteen appeared while I was watching. I think that happened when I closed the "Error: Connection Lost." box.
And, to clarify, the Connection Lost error is not connected to the issue at point here. It just happens that most times (for a fraction of a second) an 'error' is encountered while connecting, but it actually has no effect on the connection.
I have no idea what the "gamepad" warning is about, but it doesn't affect anything here as far as I'm aware.

Now, about the firewall:
I am currently trialling Kaspersky Internet Security.
For some reason its firewall puts mandelbulber2.exe (and the installer) in a 'restricted' category. (Not digitally signed?)
Still, according to the settings available, it should at least produce a Prompt for me to allow the connection - or not. It doesn't, and even with  mandelbulber2.exe "allowed" on all three machines the error is still occurring on both clients.

I wonder if Kaspersky messed up the installation to start with. I might try reinstalling with the installer 'allowed' and see what happens... I'll let you know and, if that doesn't help, about turning the firewall off. Don't see I should need to, IF it was working how I suppose it ought.

I have found some way to reproduce it. It happens when client is on the same machine as server (connection to localhost). I will investigate it.

OK. Thanks Buddhi,
This is definitely not a "localhost" problem in my case tho.

Meanwhile.. I found it possible to change Kaspersky's Restrictions settings, for both the app and installer, to "Trusted". Reinstalled the app, no joy, and even with the firewall turned off on all three machines I'm still getting the same error on both Clients.

The only thing else I can think to try is reinstall the app again with firewall turned off. I'll let you know..

Anyway, despite my finding no reason for it yet, the workaround isn't too difficult.

Reinstalled Mandelbulber, with Kaspersky firewall disabled, on all three machines.
Still the same error. Seems not so consistent on an i7 as it does on an i3. Still, restarting the i7 can reproduce it sometimes whereas with the i3 it seems all the time.

Now I'm stuck with this, after turning KIS firewall back on. :hmh: :sad1:

I have created issue on Github https://github.com/buddhi1980/mandelbulber2/issues/258
You can track actions regarding this problem on this webpage.

Thanks Buddhi,
Signed up and subscribed. Tho I wouldn't pretend to understand everything, it might be interesting to watch.

Anyway, after starting up this morning connections are working ok - apart from the same warning showing, but only once on one machine.

Btw:
After my last post, I left the app from where I took the screenshot running idle for quite some time. After which, I noticed that "Warning: QAbstractSocket::connectToHost() called when already looking up or connecting/connected to "Doorway"" was repeated over and over again. I couldn't guess how many times - it was a lot - nor do I have any idea of the time interval.

zebastan has just fixed this bug. Under link below there is corrected program for testing for you:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByYzEQQ7UDfxSGstSlFwMjdsclk/view?usp=sharing

Please let us know if it solves your problem.

Yes, thanks to all, it does seem to have solved problem.
It even fixed the "Error: Connection lost" issue, which wasn't such a bother but appears to be gone anyway.
Only on one client does (RE-)CONNECTING flash very briefly while connection is being established. No real worries there tho.

Hoping I did the right thing:
Simply extracted the mandelbulber2-win64-2.10 folder from the zip file (to my Downloads folder, as it happens) and ran mandelbulber2.exe from within it. Technically not installed, but working ok except the UI takes much longer to load - on the Client end at least.

I'll test it with a few more system restarts, when I can, and let you know if there's anything further to report.

Cheers.

Incidentally:
While I do have a Google account and am usually signed in, my Chrome browser had stopped working earlier so I resorted to Firefox for the download. What I found there was that it is necessary to sign in in order to access the file on Google Drive. Just saying.

The only thing I can add, for the time being, is about slowness of UI to load on Client end:
I created a desktop shortcut to mandelbulber2.exe. Using that makes the Client ends very, very slow to load - way too slow, seems forever like, if at all. Not on the Server end, as it happens.

Using mandelbulber2.exe directly from within the extracted folder seems no problem at all.

About the slow loading on Client end:
Turns out, it was my fault due to copying the already extracted mandelbulber2-win64-2.10 file from my Server machine to Clients.
After I copied the Zip file instead and extracted the contents in place, the (newly created) Desktop shortcut works fine.

Excellent work, people, and thank you all very much.  :beer: :beer: :beer:

The thing about Gamepad:
I wonder.. Does it need to be enabled, by default, at launch? Might there be some way to choose whether it is or it isn't?

And, another minor bug:
Clients are often displayed as READY - on both ends - and I find it takes some various fiddling to get them to show as WORKING.
It happens that, the few times I checked and despite what the display says, the client is actually working. ???

The last one I checked was working, that is. It stopped working at about 25 hours in, so it's probably best to make sure they are displaying WORKING from the beginning.
Disconnect and reconnect the Client worked in this case, thankfully. It sometimes does, but failing that;
Clicking Render a few times sometimes works too, but failing that;
Stop and relaunch the Server and, of course, start render again. Usually works without fail.

Sorry I'm getting off topic, but...


Oh, and here's another thing:
While I was writing this one of the Clients lost connection for no apparent reason. Seemed to be still "working" anyway. ???
There was a previous lost connection but, if I remember correctly, that was due to my closing the Server app tho I forget why I did so.
Now, here's the thing; Closing the connection lost Message Box (for the earlier event) caused both Client apps to crash.
I have seen the same thing before, but not often. I'll see if I can replicate it or not, as the case may be.

Yes, closing the Server app, relaunching it and starting render again. After that, closing the lost connection message box on Clients causes them to crash.
Also, I remember the reason why I restarted the server app was due to the log display not being visible. Sometimes happens - mostly after a new installation, iirc..

Side note:
I started the release version of Mandelbulber 2.10 by mistake on both client machines.
One of them showed the " "Warning: QAbstractSocket::connectToHost() called when already looking up or connecting/connected.." in the log, but it did NOT crash.
The other, however, did not display the warning but did go Error: Connection lost for a fraction of a second before connection was established - as mentioned elsewhere. That one DID crash every time I started Render.

Mandelbulber has always given me a "lost connection" box every time I've ever started up any flavor of version 2. I had to stop clicking "ok" and closing that, though, because it now crashes the client if I do so. So, I just leave the message box open and everything works fine.

I have noticed that clients can now come online when I start them in the middle of a render job, and they will sit there as "ready" until the current frame is over, and then start working at the start of the next frame. I no longer have to stop the render and restart with the added client to get it to start working. That's awesome, as I can start with a few clients and then roll them in one by one and watch the render farm get bigger, the render times get smaller, and never have to start and re-stop the whole job.   

Same here, except I'm now using a modified version of 2.10 intended to fix a different networking bug. A side benefit of which is the lost connection problem - ERROR flashing for a fraction of a second before connection is established - also being fixed, so I don't get the message box unless connection is lost by some other means.
I tended to ignore it and just leave it there too. I don't remember the Client crashing, as a rule, when I did get around to clicking it off tho. It definitely does now, if rendering is underway at the time. I want to see what happens when I close it without rendering in progress and I will test it once a current task is complete. (was estimated at about 8 hours, but is going take at least four times that) I have a vague notion it doesn't crash unless rendering, but we'll see...

That is interesting. I didn't know, but will bear it in mind. Thank you.  :)

It has generally been my habit to ignore any lost connection message boxes until I'm ready to close the program anyway. That is, after rendering has stopped. In that case, and I tested it again, closing the message box doesn't crash the client. Neither does closing it before starting render, as far as I've checked. It certainly does crash the client when rendering is in progress.

I'm now using mandelbulber2-win64-2.10 - NetRender bug fix version, because the 2.10 release version was producing errors (marked in red in the attachment) which crashed the client(s) as soon as render started. The NetRender bug fix, as an additional benefit, stopped the "Error: Connection" lost problem. So, hopefully, we can look forward to it being gone in the next release.