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[forbigd]

I see lots of topics similar, but none just like mine, so I will chime in. I have been running a ver of MC since way back at least 13 or earlier. I have a copy of 24 running on a really fast pc with fast graphics for years. I have had the same problem....for years. Today it got so frustrating, I have decided to completely wipe out my installation, perhaps even windows itself and rebuild.
The problem as succinctly as possible. Every few minutes, sometimes every minute, I will be in either theater or standard mode and MC24 stops responding. Repeated clicking shows the blue rotating circle, more brings up the white "do You Want To Close" message. If I wait, it always returns. It can take 15 or more seconds of hang. Task Manager shows no resources being used, but says 24 is not responding. The database is pretty big with over 100k songs and tons of other video, lots of tv, lots of everything. But it runs fine a lot the time, and never hangs during video or audio playback, just navigating menus. Most commonly after it has sat for a few minutes, then it hangs. Quickly navigating seems to be ok, but does hang occasionally.
The problem seems so ingrained I think a rebuild will be required. But if I restore the library, I most likely will bring the problem back. Years of marked TV and movies. All that needs to be saved, I have put it off for years. I did come here and ask a very long time ago these questions and was asked what MC reported as running processes? It is locked up, when it comes back all is well.
Anyone know why it just sticks for 15 or so seconds randomly but often on both Standard and Theater mode?
Can I specify a new location for a library and try that? Or wipe the MC off the pc as completely as possible before reinstalling and reimporting. I have so many custom views I don't want to lose either...


Thanks!!

[swiv3d]

Where are the files kept - as this looks like a network problem?

[forbigd]

You have that right.  A Windows server sitting a distance and Switch away.
No way I could have the data on one pc.... I guess I do, on the server, but it isn't a suitable player.
I tested what I just said, and even in music I can get the interface to hang for the 15 seconds. Music keeps playing, but visualizer and interface are frozen, then they come back...

Don

[swiv3d]

You might check the permissions in your AV/Firewall software to ensure that nothing there is trying to block MC. Is your library database on the pc you use as the player?

[forbigd]

Windows firewall lets both 32 and 64 versions of MC24 through
The Database is on the local machine, the player.
Server is windows server with 75 TB online, mostly full too. Player is a couple of gigabit switches away, network all gigabit.

Even if I don't touch MC like typing to you know, and I move over to the MC windows, it could be responsive, or it could be hung. I don't have to click something for it to hang. Makes me think it is syncing or importing, or thumbnailing or something, but Task manager shows just a percent or two of CPU usage, but it shows MC "Not Responding".

[swiv3d]

What about antivirus software? Make sure autoimport is turned off.

[forbigd]

No Antivirus influences.... but autoimport is on....
If it was off I would have to do manual imports. At least daily...
It is very slow realizing stuff is added to the server, where a any local media gets added right away.
I should turn off Autoimport?

Seems weird, but not hard to try...
Or is it?  How do you turn it off? Choose import single folder in the import window?



Don

[~OHM~]

drives going to sleep?...memory playback?...and remember a windows server (OS) is not recommended or supported!

[forbigd]

> remember a windows server (OS) is not recommended or supported!

I didn't know that.... I am sure it says it somewhere but I didn't catch that...
Not much I can do about that... RAID 5 and all server stuff running for years....about as long as the problem has been around..hmm...

So if you had a PC box with all the fixins needed to be a server, but couldn't run windows on it, what would you do?
Windows Server OS?  Could I run Win 10 if I could find RAID drivers and not have this hangup?

Don

[RoderickGI]

...and remember a windows server (OS) is not recommended or supported!

That is only true if a user is running MC on the server itself. If a Windows Server is being used as a media file server/NAS, and MC is running on another (player) PC, then there is no issue.

It sounds like Forbigd is running the Windows server that way. Correct Forbigd?

If my interpretation is wrong, please provide a more complete description of your network, server, and MC setup Forbigd.



Nobody has really come up with a full explanation for these hangs, or "pauses in response". There have been a few threads discussing the issue though, and I have found some good information in those threads. Worth the research, although it sounds like you have already done some of that.

MC is waiting for something, but what that something is can be very difficult to determine. MC is very multi-threaded, but it still has a primary thread that does a lot of stuff, and that seems to be the issue here. The only way to really work out what is going on in a specific installation and environment, such as this one, is to use some of the available tools like Process Monitor and other tools from Microsoft Sysinternals or elsewhere. But using those can be a difficult task with a big learning curve. The MC logs may provide some information, but it may not be specific enough, particularly when MC is waiting for an operating system process, such as file access.

It is pretty likely that the issue is related to the speed of access to the media files on the Windows Server, or the configuration of the server, such as memory assigned to caching, look ahead in reading disks, and so on. Waking a whole RAID array is an obvious issue, if it is allowed to sleep. But if this happens very frequently, and the RAID array isn't allowed to sleep so frequently, then I think the best thing you can do is optimise your Windows Server. That used to be a very technical task, to get the best efficiency out of a server. I don't know how hard it is these days though.

Oh, if your RAID array is nearly full, that is sure to slow it down. But you said this has been happening for years, and I assume that the array hasn't been nearly full for years?

To test that this is a network and media file access issue, just copy a few media files to your PC locally, then create a new MC library and import those local files only. Then use that new library as you would the original library and see if the problem occurs, and if it is as common.

Another test is that you could exclude all media files in your Antivirus software, rather than just the MC programs. As you have so much media (75TB!) it could just be that your Antivirus is constantly trying to scan, or finish scanning, all that media. You could run this test temporarily, and if this is the problem, perhaps a full scan of the media file from the Player PC might stop the ongoing scans causing an issue. I honestly don't really think this would be the problem though. If you also run Antivirus software on the Windows server you may also have to do a full scan there, as it would be a separate database of scanned files. Double whammy.

Another possible issue is that MC uses File System Events to detect if there are new files to import via Auto Import, if those events are reported to the operating system. When everything is run on one PC, File System Events are visible to MC. If media files are on an external device, such as a NAS or maybe a Windows Server, then File System Events may not be visible to MC. In that case, MC needs to scan the drives associated with Auto Import to look for changes. That can take time. A lot of time if the media is on a 75TB RAID system. I think that Windows Servers can report File System Event to other Windows systems, but I'm no expert in this area, so don't know for sure. If you find that the issue is indeed a network response issue, you may wish to look into this.



I don't think a rebuild of MC would help, especially not re-importing everything. That would achieve nothing but lots of work and anguish. I don't think rebuilding the Windows PC would help either, as long as it is up to date.

[forbigd]

Wow, so much info, thanks alot.
The server is windows server 2008 r2 on a
SuperMicro X8DTI-F 4U Server 2x Quad-Core Xeon E5504 2GHz 12GB
3 RAID 5 arrays each with 8 4TB NAS Drives, about 25 tbs per... It isn't full but lots of stuff, easily 4-8 TBs free each Array.
Running about 3 years with only one drive loss.
Two Switch hops to the player a newish Win 10 prebuilt HP box with SSD and i7.
I hate to admit it, but I don't run anything but windows. No outside antivirus, but the player is locked down.
Same with server...
I can try the "some files and rebuild option". It is my best hope.
I do believe in the divide and conquer method of diagnosis.

If it were bogging down trying to run autoimport it would take resources, and run..... somewhat. This takes no resources yet is locked tight until it frees. Most of the time during the lockup the resources for MC stay at zero, but it can spike up to 15 or 20% for a second (cpu) then back to zero and stay locked a few more seconds.

I said it doesn't stop music when locked, so it is possible Video watching is uninterrupted and the MC is locking all the time, easily once every few minutes. Sooner if I play in the menus.

I will make up a drive for the player with some stuff on it for testing. I will report, on how that goes... or sooner.

Thanks again.

[JimH]

That is what you would see if you were trying to access a network drive or server that was unavailable.  Double check all your file location settings.  Search in MC's database -- I think you can add a minus to remove all C: results, for example.

Check the Windows Device Manager for any errors.

[~OHM~]

That is only true if a user is running MC on the server itself. If a Windows Server is being used as a media file server/NAS, and MC is running on another (player) PC, then there is no issue.

It sounds like Forbigd is running the Windows server that way. Correct Forbigd?

If my interpretation is wrong, please provide a more complete description of your network, server, and MC setup Forbigd.

Oh DA me....I was going to mention that....

[swiv3d]

Do you have some tv tuner cards in the server? I have seen this type of hang-up mentioned in previous posts which were related to MC spending a lot of time checking them. Yaobing was doing some work on that problem. Make sure you have updated to the latest version 24.0.46 just in case.

[forbigd]

Hi,
No Tuner cards. I don't record anything.
Here is an interesting bit... In the garage (still two hops switch wise from server)...I have a MC24 in a slightly slower box that does only music and music videos. This issue isn't happening there. If we are playing videos and we are at the MC, it stops responding about 10 seconds before the end of the clip, and then returns after the next video starts. I know of two MCs that do that. I just assumed it was  getting ready somehow for the next video and locked out the interface. Everyone at Thursday Pool knows you can't select anything when a VIDEO song is finishing.. kind of strange... but it doesn't have the lockup we have been discussing. The difference between the two is the garage has only the Music and Music Videos, and my comedy directory. The main machine for the house (the locker...) has all that and tons more, 6k movies, 10s of thousands of photos, Lots of Ebooks, and audio books, and lots of various video, It's library has to be much bigger.
I have checked the files section of video and audio to make sure there were not an illegal or incorrect locations. I will check again.
I am still building a drive with enough material to keep the family happy during the test. The TV show directory is 11.5TB and I need a good portion of that...

Don

[RD James]

MC is waiting for something, but what that something is can be very difficult to determine. MC is very multi-threaded, but it still has a primary thread that does a lot of stuff, and that seems to be the issue here.

Yes, the underlying issue seems to be that MC still runs the UI on the same process as many other tasks - likely a holdover from the roots of the program being 20 years old.
Even without network access, if I have other processes with heavy I/O running on the system, Media Center's UI can start to become very sluggish.
It's the same sort of issue that used to be present in web browsers before they moved to a multi-process architecture, where a very CPU-intensive web page could actually slow down the UI enough that you might have difficulty closing that tab.

[JimH]

Yes, the underlying issue seems to be that MC still runs the UI on the same process as many other tasks - likely a holdover from the roots of the program being 20 years old.
Even without network access, if I have other processes with heavy I/O running on the system, Media Center's UI can start to become very sluggish.
It's the same sort of issue that used to be present in web browsers before they moved to a multi-process architecture, where a very CPU-intensive web page could actually slow down the UI enough that you might have difficulty closing that tab.

Baloney

[forbigd]

The player is a screamer of a machine, loafing for MC.
No other apps or extra processes running, except GForce or AEON visualizations. and those only for audio music.
I don't see it as sluggish. It just stops responding, locked up if you will, for 10-20 seconds often. In theater View we can be looking through TV shows and it stops responding to the remote, if you wait it comes back. If you keep clicking trying to get it to respond you get the blue circle, more clicking and we get the white screen asking me if I want to close it. I don't and it always comes back. Just very annoying to sit with family all staring at the spinning blue circle. All we are asking id to play a file but it won't let me choose anything, we just wait and complain.....to me.
Also it isn't saving keystrokes/remote commands. It doesn't see any of the extra presses of the remote, they are lost.
If scrolling down a list it will stop, I will release the remote button, and eventually control is returned, but it doesn't know I was holding the remote button down far longer after it locked.
Don

[~OHM~]

still sounds like a Hard Drive issue to me

[RoderickGI]

I don't see it as sluggish. It just stops responding, locked up if you will, for 10-20 seconds often. In theater View we can be looking through TV shows and it stops responding to the remote, if you wait it comes back. If you keep clicking trying to get it to respond you get the blue circle, more clicking and we get the white screen asking me if I want to close it. I don't and it always comes back. Just very annoying to sit with family all staring at the spinning blue circle. All we are asking id to play a file but it won't let me choose anything, we just wait and complain.....to me.
Also it isn't saving keystrokes/remote commands. It doesn't see any of the extra presses of the remote, they are lost.
If scrolling down a list it will stop, I will release the remote button, and eventually control is returned, but it doesn't know I was holding the remote button down far longer after it locked.

It is a difficult issue to try to track down, which is why I haven't persisted with some of the minor issues I see. I just wait for MC to come back, or if in a hurry, kill it and start again.

The Sysinternals tools are the only thing I can think of that might find a transient issue in Windows that is the root cause of the problem, or an indicator of a problem MC is triggering. I have used some of the tools a bit but have never found the issue, and haven't been motivated to spend the time it would take to find the problem, if it is even possible to do so.

I do sometimes see a similar problem to what you describe in Theatre View. Scrolling down a long list of TV episodes using my old Harmony IR remote (which has dodgy buttons and is near last legs), I sometimes see MC stop scrolling and more button presses do nothing. I don't recall seeing the white screen/"Do you want to close MC?" message just using the remote control though. But it could happen. When I wait for MC to respond, sometimes it will remember some of the button presses I have tried, and sometimes it won't. Sometimes it only remembers a few, and I can end up in a completely different area of MC!

I think I see that "pause" most often immediately after doing something else. For example, if playing a TV episode, stopping it, then immediately trying to scroll down the episode list.

The trouble is that when using an IR Remote to control MC there is quite a chain of steps to get anything to happen on the screen, and there are a number of third parties in the data chain: The remote, the IR Receiver hardware, the IR Receiver driver (which may be Microsoft or a third party), then MC. Ther may be more steps in that chain, which are part of Windows. I don't seem to see the issue when using mouse control, which remains responsive. So I'm just not sure in this example that I could blame MC.

A difficult issue to diagnose. Difficult even to reliably create the issue.

It would be good if someone knew how to diagnose it without a ton of work.

[JimH]

I have checked the files section of video and audio to make sure there were not an illegal or incorrect locations. I will check again.

Check all of the File Locations settings.  Make sure they exist.

Try this from Explorer.  Enter a non-existant machine:  \\bogus (for example).  Windows will hang for about 20 seconds.  Is this similar?

[forbigd]

The trouble is that when using an IR Remote to control MC

I have a usb keyboard attached, and the problem happens with it too.
In fact I have maybe 5 or 6 keyboards attached to this same machine (via Logitech's Universal dongle.)

Check all of the File Locations settings.  Make sure they exist.
-----------
I have some entries I am concerned about... Recently imported shows the same two DTS files being imported many many times. I will look that over well. My test HD is about done. It will have about 6tb of TV Shows. I will put it in the player bax, and make a new library with only that drive. That will happen this afternoon (6am here in California now)

Sorry I am not good a quoting, I will work on that. I can't seem to un-italicize everything past the second italics.

[forbigd]

JimH wins the contest... Thanks!

That is what you would see if you were trying to access a network drive or server that was unavailable.  Double check all your file location settings.  Search in MC's database -- I think you can add a minus to remove all C: results, for example.

Check the Windows Device Manager for any errors.

I did find some references back to when I had a mapped drive.. it was in Images, an area I don't go to a lot.
Once I cleared that, the lockups stopped. Went all day yesterday testing, and we couldn't detect it locking once..
Yay!!!

Thanks
Don

[JimH]

Thanks for reporting the solution.  I'm glad you found the fix.

[RoderickGI]

I'll have to remember that solution.

Thinking back, I do recall it solving a similar problem once before, but I hadn't put it into my bag of solutions.

I'm glad it is fixed.