Recorder Stuck in Loop

We have not experienced this looping behavior.  If you downgrade to the previous Recorder Package version, does the issue stop? 5.3.1-20251205-115509

​@RafaelSemear The question that I typically raise when something was working properly but is not working properly anymore is: what changed?

In this case, you pointed out one item that changed: The version of the Recorder package. However, you mention trying different versions of the Recorder package. That seems to reduce the importance of the new Recorder package version.

What else changed? Well, the Bot Agent version may have changed. The Bot Agent logs might give some insight as to what is not working correctly. Find those logs at C:\ProgramData\AutomationAnywhere\BotRunner\Logs

Anything else changed? If you’re using Chrome, Google made some sweeping changes in the Chrome browser. One of the most visible for us is that Chrome now displays PDFs in an iframe, which our web servers don’t allow. It makes me wonder if a previous version of Chrome would have the same issues.

Let’s start with the logs and seeing if you can roll back Chrome.

Unfortunately, downgrading did not resolve the issue. We tested multiple previous versions of the Recorder package, going as far back as 4.3.2, and the behavior still occurs.

What we are seeing is inconsistent: the bots may run normally for a day, but then the looping issue returns the next day. The problem seems to specifically affect ComboBox fields, other actions appear to work as expected.

Thanks for the insights.

What we noticed is that this behavior started after a Control Room update on January 14th. At that time, we were not using the newest Recorder packages. The issue started while we were still on older package versions, and even after updating to the latest version and later rolling back to other versions the problem continued with no improvement.

What’s been consistent is that any Recorder package version, regardless of how old or new, seems to work once and then stops working afterward. This behavior is always related to ComboBox fields. The automation may execute correctly on one run or one day, and then fail on the next execution with the same setup.

Regarding errors, the Error Handler consistently returns:
“Error message: Unable to find COMBOBOX. Search Criteria did not match.”
This happens even though the element is correct, stable, and has not changed.

I will check the Bot Agent logs as suggested to see if they provide more insight. We’ll also evaluate the Chrome version and test a rollback to confirm whether browser changes could be contributing to the issue.

​@RafaelSemear The other thing you can try is to use a different “technology” for the combo box fields. 

​@RafaelSemear The other thing you can try is to use a different “technology” for the combo box fields. 

 

We also tested using different capture technologies for the ComboBox fields. Unfortunately, regardless of the capture technology used, the behavior eventually returns to the same looping problem.
And his issue has been occurring only on our automation servers. We do not see this behavior on development machines, where the same automations run as expected. And Chrome is on the same version.

​@RafaelSemear The next thing to try is using the Run JavaScript action in the Browser package. Try setting the value using JavaScript.

Interesting that the automation servers are affected but not the development machines. The “what changed” for that could be a lot of things, including operating system.

Could you use one of those automation servers temporarily as a dev machine and see if you can reproduce the issue? That would make it much faster to find a solution than to change something, test it on an automation server, change again, etc.