Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Marcel de Man]

Hi,

I'm using Media Center 24/7 to supply music to all the  rooms in my house. With MC10 everything ran smoothly but since I switched to MC11 I have random crashes.Sofar this happens on every new release, the last one I installed was 11.0.264. What happens is that MC can still be controlled but the music just hangs(stops) in the middle of a song. Restarting MC11 fixes the problem for a while until the next crash. I play MP3 and WMA intermixed. I'm not sure if this is caused by MC11 or if I have another problem with my computer. Before I switch back to MC10 I would like to know if there is anyone else experiencing the same problem.

Thanks
Marcel

[canaro99]

I had this problem with 265 on my home machine last night (first time); I finally reinstalled 264 and no problem.

I could figure it out--CDs would start to stutter, the program would freeze, and I'd have to go to task master to shut it down. Start it up, the problem repeated. After three tries I reinstalled 264.

I have 265 on my laptop and no problems--I've been using MC all morning.

John

[Marcel de Man]

Tried re-installing 264, doesn't help for me. I did notice thatwhen I stop playing and start again, MC will run again.

[glynor]

I have definately not had problems like this with any of the recent builds (on any of my machines).  Could we have more details about your system?  You can use the System Info from under the Help menu to collect some common details, but also do you have any network or external drives, other applications running, or other problems with the machine?  If you ignore MC for a long time when it is "frozen" does it eventually come back to life?  If so, it could be this.

If it is truely random, there is a slight chance that you could have a hardware problem.  One way to test if you can shut the machine down for a few hours is to run Memtest86 on it for a few passes.  If that works, you can also try a Prime95 Stress Test which is more of a "Processor Test" and runs inside of Windows.

I'm not saying it is hardware, but it could be, so it's nice to eliminate that possibility.

[JimH]

Try uninstalling MC10 (as a test).

[Marcel de Man]

Hi

Below you can read my configuration:

Media Center Registered 11.0.266 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 11\

Microsoft Windows XP 5.1 Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
AMD Unknown 2185 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1048 MB, Free - 723 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2900.2180 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2900.2627 (xpsp_sp2_gdr.050309-1648) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2900.2620 (xpsp_sp2_gdr.050225-1820) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping /   Drive I:   Mode:Normal  Type:Auto  Speed:Max
  Digital playback: Yes /  Use YADB: Yes /  Get cover art: No /  Calc replay gain: Yes /  Copy volume: 32767
  Eject after ripping: Yes /  Play sound after ripping: No 

Burning /  No burners found.
  Test mode: No /  Eject after writing: Yes /  Direct decoding: Yes /  Write CD-Text: Yes
  Use playback settings: No /  Normalization: None


I have other applications running (homeseer and girder) but I already did a test running without them. I could have a windows problem, a couple of weeks ago I tried to install a Airlink PC tuner card. This install went very painfull since it was interfearing with my soundcard. I decided to remove it but it could have left some problems in the windows configuration.

My next step will be to try MC10 again, if that doesn't work I will try to re-install windows.

I wanted to be sure before making these steps that I wasn't looking at a software bug.

Thanks
Marcel

[glynor]

AMD Unknown 2185 MHz MMX

I see you've got an "unknown" processor.  This is because you are running your processor out of spec.  Probably either: a) you have it overclocked, or b) you're running an Athlon XP-M (like I do).  Either way, I strongly recommend that you do the hardware stability tests I mentioned above.  If you are having random problems, hardware rejections, and general system instability, with an overclocked/out-of-spec processor... Checking that before you nuke and pave Windows could save you a lot of heartache!

[Marcel de Man]

Did the prime95 test. Couldn't do the memtest since I'm travelling at the moment and memtest runs standalone.

Got the following error time after time:

FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.484375, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.

You were right, it looks like a hardware problem.
Time for me to go to another forum to find out how to resolve this.

Thanks for your help.
Marcel

[glynor]

Yep.  Prime95's Stress test pounds on the processor and chipset (where Memtest checks the actual RAM).  Sounds like you found the source of the problem (overclocking a bit too much or insufficient cooling).  Assuming your Heat-Sink-Fan isn't wimpy (if it is I'd look for an aftermarket HSF), I'd try tweaking the FSB/Multiplier settings in concert with small adjustments to the VCore setting (only tweak this a little at a time -- the higher you go, the more stable it will run, but you also reduce the life of your CPU by pumping more juice into it).

It's a pain, but the best method is:

1) Tweak BIOS Settings
2) Boot Windows.
3) If Windows boots sucessfully, reboot and run 1 Memtest pass.
4) If successful, Run Prime95 pass.
5) If successful, keep settings or else goto line 1.  Repeat as needed.

[Marcel de Man]

Thanks,

I will try that when I'm back home later this week, and keep you posted with the results.

Thanks again for helping me out.

[Marcel de Man]

Got it resolved, I was overclocking memory. Brought it down from 200Mhz to 166Mhz. problem solved. MC11 is running for 13 hrs without crashes.

Thanks again

Marcel

[JimH]

Thanks, Marcel for reporting the solution and thanks to Glynor for pointing in the right direction.