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[cmonache]

Hello,

I have  been a user of you product for a number of years. I have been waiting for each new version to come out to provide more stability related to the "media server." I am also evaluating your 11 beta.

The problem I am having is with the product freezing on me. I have the following two environments:

1. Windows 2003 Server which contains 5 hard drives with 15,800 wav files.

     I am accessing this Server using mapped drives from three difference systems all running Windows XP Pro SP2. I have been trying to get an idea of how long these systems will play and media player tends to lock on all three systems. Currently when I left for work today I start the three systems and only one system is still running and is on about song 200 of 15,800. The other two systems locked and another side effect is that I can no longer access the mapped drives on the system until I reboot. I am playing back with continous playback option with shuffle.

2. Windows XP System with the same 15,800 files but with their MP3 conversion all stored locally. This system also locks up and loses the ability to play back MP3 files unless I reboot the system. Sometimes this occurs after the first song plays sometime it will give me 20 - 30 minutes worth of playback.

Review of system resources when the problem occurs shows now hints of cause. Memory is well within limits and CPU never goes about 20%.

3 of the 4 playback systems are dedicated audio playback only. That means that only the base OS, service packs and media player are installed.

This has been frustrating because you guys have a great product but the stability seems to be in question. Are there any log files I can produce which might shed lite on where the program is crashing? Does it have anything to do with the fact that I am trying to manage 15,000+ songs? I have tried other programs whcih could not even handle loading this number of files.

Please let me know what information I can provide you with. I have enough environments to test this thourghly if you give me some guidence related to log files or what information you are looking for.

Thanks,

Chris

[JimH]

Is the network wireless?  Please post any details you know.

If you eliminate the mapped network drive from this setup, can you still reproduce the problem?

The reason I'm asking is that there are a lot of layers to your setup and not all of them are ours.

[KingSparta]

Is the network wireless?  Please post any details you know.

turn off Visuals and see what happens.

also sometimes the 3d visuals will crash MC with A Visual C Error (there may be a bug in the code)

[cmonache]

Jim,

Hello, I have been doing a lot of work to get this program working and it appears that the problem may have been with the system hosting the WAV files. I have rebuilt the system. The old system was a celeron 1.4 and the new system is based on pentium 2.8.  I have about 7000 of the file back on the system and I have been running 10.0.173 all night. I have also had 11.0.105 running all night on a second system.

I am creating the music library by directly searching network drives.

I need to get some extra IDE cable to complete the installation so tonight I should have all 15,000 file loaded and see if things are still okay after that. I will also test Media Server from a 3rd system.

Thanks

Chris

[tommybob]

My system and it's problems are very similar to cmonache's. When accessing Media Server from either of 2 clients, the network services of the server freeze after a short time. Could be 2 minutes, could be 30 minutes. The server has several drives containing almost 25,000 mp3 files. The server pc easily searched and cataloged all mp3 in the "default" library. It will play mp3s endlessly locally - but freezes soon after the Media server starts serving mp3.
The network is the only thing that appears to freeze on the server - all other application run fine, but network access is completely hosed - no internet access even. All pcs on network run XP Pro SP2. While I have a wireless router, all pcs are hardwired on the network. Network function on the server will run forever if the Media Server is disabled.

[JimH]

Please report the OS and the version of MC you run.

If the network itself freezes, you probably have a deeper problem.  Try updating Windows and the driver for the network card.

[Robert Taylor]

The network card doesn't have the power management stuff set which causes the PC to power down the network card does it?

ie. under the properties for the network card itself, there's usually an option under POWER MANAGEMENT, something like "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power".

Maybe that is hwta's causing this problem.

I run Media Server all the time, and frequently play music all night for a party, and have no issues such as this (using version 10.0.173)

Hope this helps...

[tommybob]

This is a relatively new PC (2 weeks).....fresh install of Win XP Pro SP2 - all latest drivers as of 2 weeks ago. Network functions seem to be stable (transferred over 300 gigs via networked mapped drives to several internal hard drives - no problems) VNC working fine, internet access fine, mapped drive access is fine. Only Media Server causes network to halt after short time. Do you really believe it could be a driver issue?

[Robert Taylor]

Not suggesting it's a driver issue...

If the power management stuff is turned on (which I believe it is by default), then if the PC is apparently inactive (I don't know how it determines this), then your PC may put your network card to sleep to save power.

Check it...it takes 1 minute to see if it's the cause...

[tommybob]

Lunch,

Sorry, I was really directing my reply to JimH. But - Lunch, you were right - the power saving function was enabled on the network card. I turned it off, and am checking now. Thanks for the input.
Anyhow....for JimH... it's MC 10.0.155 running on WinXP Pro SP2.
Thanks all!!

[JimH]

Thanks, Lunch.  Good call!

[tommybob]

Lunch.......your tip seems to have fixed the problem. Many thanks!!

[Robert Taylor]

You're welcome!

It beats me why this function is turned on by default. I can understand things like that for laptops, but for a desktop system, it seems rather silly...

Glad it's working...

[cmonache]

Lunch,

When I get home I would like to check for the same setting. Typically where are the power saving setting for the network card?

Chris

[JimH]

One for the "Weird" Hall of Fame.

Thanks again, Lunch!

[JimH]

Lunch,

When I get home I would like to check for the same setting. Typically where are the power saving setting for the network card?

Try right clicking on the network adaptor in Network Connections and choosing properties.

[Robert Taylor]

When you have the Network properties open, click the Configure button next to the icon for the network device at the top of the Properties window, then click on the Power Management tab. This is where you should find it.

[cmonache]

Jim and all,

Well I have managed to solve the problem. I did not have the DNS properly set on my client machines and they were not communicating properly with other machines in the domain. I was getting a lot of Userenv errors in my event log. This would explain the inconsistency I was having with other network issues also. Once I started pointing to my internal dns things appear to be working fine. I have been running for over two days on two machines. I have skipped testing v10 and have moved on to 11.0.108.

This works using network drives. I will try the newer library server next to check out the performance.

Chris

[John Gateley]

Thanks for letting us know.

j