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[Grenache]

I was moving around in Theater View and when I reached "Playing Now" MC crashed. This has happened before, even if it's not the most typical crash scenario for me. However, this time only the MC window crashed, not the server, so I could restart from the icon on the taskbar. Normally the server crashes to.

So I don't know if the logfiles recorded anything. Nonetheless I've send them to logs at jriver dot com.

Setup:
MC 18.0.78
Client/server
Windows 8

[glynor]

Do the crashes you see almost always happen when you are using Theater View, or do you see them when you are in Standard View too?

Theater View actually pushes on the Video Card in your computer fairly hard, because it is a full-screen 3D view.  It is more like a "game" than a normal computer application.  It can expose underlying problems with your video card driver (or the GPU itself, though this is less likely).

This is for everyone...

If you experience regular crashes that seem to be related to:

1. Using Theater View
2. Starting video playback
3. Starting visualizers in Playing Now or fullscreen.

Then step one would be to update your video card drivers.  Especially if you are running on a typical desktop/laptop with Intel integrated graphics.  Intel still does not have its act together on writing video card drivers, but they used to be absolutely dismal (not even that long ago).  There are several serious, known problems with older versions of their drivers that will cause exactly this behavior.

It may seem like it is Media Center's fault, because VLC or MPC-HC may (or may not) have the same problem.  But different applications can push the GPU in different ways and use different features and expose different flaws.  MC does a LOT to try to ensure that video playback is of high-quality, and this can expose underlying weakness in the drivers that you may have never seen unless you try to run 3D games (which is nigh-impossible on Intel GPUs anyway, so you'd probably never know).

I will add this, though... It seems like lately Intel is finally getting its act together.  The current GMA drivers seem to be working fine for me here on my one laptop with integrated graphics, and that was absolutely not always the case.

[Grenache]

Do the crashes you see almost always happen when you are using Theater View, or do you see them when you are in Standard View too?

Almost always in Theater View. Unfortunately it's where I spend most of the time.

My Video Card is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 and my drivers are up to date. I'm on an Intel i7 3.40 GHz with 16GB RAM.

I've been running former versions of MC on much less powerful systems with a lot less trouble.

[glynor]

Almost always in Theater View. Unfortunately it's where I spend most of the time.

Here too.

That system should be way overkill to run Theater View (which does fine on Intel GPUs with appropriate drivers), and I know the Nvidia GPUs are what Matt uses at home (and Nev uses to develop LAV).  I happen to have AMD cards in most of my primary machines right now, though I do have a GTX 7800 still kicking about (but I haven't been using it for MC lately).

Are you using a remote control to control MC?  If so, what is the setup for that?

I have seen a few crashes that were caused by Girder flaking out on my HTPC (sending crazy non-sensical Windows Messages), but that's Girder, not MC (I can tell because Girder crashes at the same time as MC, and if you look in the Girder logs, it was clearly hosed).

I'd also add, I've not been completely immune to Theater View crashes on my system with MC18, but it is quite rare.  Not something that happens every day, or even every week/month, but I have seen them here and there.  Never to the point where I'd even bother to post a log, just chalking it up to "new code".  However, I use mostly Lineup or Thumbnail style views, with none of the fancy 3D wall effects enabled.  Are you using any of that in your Views?

I'll try to capture a log myself next time it happens where I can't clearly blame Girder (which is rare-enough itself), and post it, just so we can see if there is something "deeper" going on with Theater View.

Lastly, you shouldn't need to with that system, but does tweaking the anti-aliasing settings under Options > General > Video Card make any difference?  I run it with it set to Highest Quality, even with an older AMD 4870 running in a Mac inside a Parallels VM, and it is fine, but maybe there is something specific going on and you can mitigate it by dropping the quality (you never know, Nvidia is certainly not immune to driver problems).

[Grenache]

Are you using a remote control to control MC?  If so, what is the setup for that?

Yes, a Logitech diNovo Mini. It's a small bluetooth keyboard with a dongle attached to an USB port. Working quite well when you get used to the annoying ClickPad.

However, I use mostly Lineup or Thumbnail style views, with none of the fancy 3D wall effects enabled.  Are you using any of that in your Views?

No, I'm old-school too. The 3D views look fancy, but I personally find them unusable.

[JimH]

Everything in Theater View uses 3D drawing.  As glynor says, it uses video hardware more intensely.  A video driver problem is a strong possibility.  The latest driver may not be the best driver.  Try a Google search to see what you can learn.  Or try another video card.

I know you believe you are seeing MC problems and not anything else, but this thread is nothing but problems that people thought were MC problems and turned out not to be.  It's three pages long now and it is not an exhaustive list.

[Grenache]

A video driver problem is a strong possibility.  The latest driver may not be the best driver.  Try a Google search to see what you can learn.  

I've tried several different drivers, believe me (I guess you probably won't).

Or try another video card.

So now I should run out and buy another video card and install it to run MC??

I know you believe you are seeing MC problems and not anything else

I've been a loyal customer since MC 12 or 11 and only started the MC18 stability thread to - quote - "find out if I'm the only one with frequent crashes.  If that's the case it must be my system."

but this thread is nothing but problems that people thought were MC problems and turned out not to be.  It's three pages long now and it is not an exhaustive list.

I've read it all.

[Matt]

The log you sent shows a normal shutdown in the previous log, and a launch and use of the logging dialog in the current log.

After a crash, restart Media Center.  Then do Help > Logging > Report problem...

Email the zip file it creates.

Thanks.

[JimH]

Here's another similar problem.
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=76036.msg514998#msg514998

Both Nvidia and both Win8.

[Grenache]

After a crash, restart Media Center.  Then do Help > Logging > Report problem...
Email the zip file it creates.

That's exactly what I did, and what I've done before, when Yaobing helped me out.

As I wrote, the server didn't crash this time, only the MC window (which btw wasn't in Theater View but in Standard View), so that's maybe why the shutdown wasn't logged.

Anyway, thanks for looking into it, Matt.

[Matt]

As I wrote, the server didn't crash this time, only the MC window (which btw wasn't in Theater View but in Standard View), so that's maybe why the shutdown wasn't logged.

They're the same process, so you can't crash one with out the other. 

Is it possible you're running MC17 and MC18 at the same time maybe?

[Grenache]

They're the same process, so you can't crash one with out the other.

On my other monitor I got a Windows dialog box saying that there's been a problem and MC needs to close (or something like that). I clicked OK and went to my computer where the MC window (Standard View) had shut down, but - to my surprise - the server was still running. As I said, this is the first time after a "crash" that I still had the server icon in my taskbar, so apparently it doesn't count as a crash.

Is it possible you're running MC17 and MC18 at the same time maybe?

No, I've removed every trace of MC 17. I've even tried to completely remove MC18 and reinstall from scratch.

[Grenache]

Here's another similar problem.
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=76036.msg514998#msg514998
Both Nvidia and both Win8.

I've seen it and I'm following it with great interest.

However, as I've already said many times, I just installed Windows 8 a couple of weeks ago and I had exactly the same stability problems with MC18 under Windows 7. At the time MC18 was still in beta, so I wrote it off as that.

So could it be the video card? Absolutely, but I've had the same card since the middle of the MC17 development cycle and I didn't have the same stability issues. Also, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 isn't one of the most exotic video cards out there.

[JimH]

So could it be the video card? Absolutely, but I've had the same card since the middle of the MC17 development cycle and I didn't have the same stability issues. Also, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 isn't one of the most exotic video cards out there.

It may turn out to be an MC18 problem, but bugs in video drivers, like bugs in all software, are strange animals.  They may be there for a long time before the right set of circumstances occur.  In this particular case, MC18 is significantly faster than MC17.

[glynor]

They may be there for a long time before the right set of circumstances occur.

Darn right.  How about this weird one?

I was having trouble a while back (probably about a year ago now) where Firefox on my HTPC did a terrible job rendering fonts.  But only certain fonts.  In fact, the visual corruption was not visible in the "browser" part of Firefox, but throughout the UI chrome of the browser itself (so the "File/Edit/View" menus, and the titlebar and whatnot).  Fonts in the "browser" part were perfect.  All of the fonts in the menus, settings dialog, and everywhere else in the application looked like they were rendered on an 8-bit Atari.

I couldn't figure it out for the longest time.  First I suspected one of my Firefox plugins, so I went through and nuked my Firefox install.  Then my Firefox profile, and finally tried running it with just a plain-clean installation.  I had DPI Scaling enabled on that system (since it is a HTPC), tried turning it off and the problem vanished.  So, I chalked it up to a Firefox-specific bug with High DPI mode (even filed a bug report on Bugzilla).  But no other applications exhibited the problem (including other browsers like Chrome).  I considered switching over to Chrome, despite the fact that I have a strong resistance to giving Google my entire browsing history (they know enough about me, thanks), and the fact that Chrome doesn't have a nice plugin to scale the UI chrome sizes like Firefox does (which makes Firefox decent for HTPC use).  One day I was annoyed enough that I tried enabling high DPI mode on one of my other machines that wasn't having the problem, just to test.  I set it up identically to the HTPC, and then opened Firefox.

The fonts were perfect.

Googling, googling, googling...

Turns out, it was on obscure Driver Bug in certain versions of the Catalyst drivers for AMD cards.  The machine I tested it on was running a months-old version of the drivers which didn't have the bug yet, so didn't exhibit the problem.  But the HTPC was running more current drivers, which did have the problem.  The wacky thing was, to experience it, you had to have:

1. High DPI mode enabled (more than 100% sized fonts).
2. A newer version of Catalyst with an AMD GPU.
3. A newish version of Firefox, or certain other obscure applications that used the same kind of font rendering system.

Rolling back to the HTPC's driver to the same one I had on the PC downstairs fixed it instantly.  Eventually (months and months later), AMD issued a fix, and now I can use the current drivers again.

Driver issues can be bizarre and unexpected.

[Matt]

Please try sending another log after a crash.

[JimH]

Setup:
MC 18.0.78
Client/server
Windows 8

It isn't clear to me what is crashing.  You say that you are running client/server, so I assume you have another PC running MC.  Is it using the exact same version (18.0.78)?

And then you said that "the server was still running".  Was this the other machine?  Or Library Server on the client?

When you say "crash", I assume you mean the program disappears, with or without an error message.  Sometimes people say "crash" when they should say "freeze" (program ceases to function, but doesn't disappear).

[Grenache]

I assume you have another PC running MC.  Is it using the exact same version (18.0.78)?

You've asked me this question before and my answer was yes.

And then you said that "the server was still running".  Was this the other machine?  Or Library Server on the client?

This has nothing to do with a client. There's no "other machine" in this. I only listed my setup "Client/server" at the bottom of my post because you've also asked me about this before.

When I say "the server was still running" I meant that I still had "Media Server" running. Like when I voluntarely close the MC window and the server keeps running. When MC crashes on my system the MC window shuts down AND the Media Server icon dissapears from my taskbar. In this case - and this time only - the server was still running, when the MC window shut down.

When you say "crash", I assume you mean the program disappears, with or without an error message.  Sometimes people say "crash" when they should say "freeze" (program ceases to function, but doesn't disappear).

When I say "crash" I mean crash and not freeze. The program dissapears, usually with an error message. I also experience "freeze" (when you have to shut down the program manually), but this is less frequent and was not the case here.

I hope I've explained myself clearly and answered your questions.

[Grenache]

Please try sending another log after a crash.

Well, it seems to be my lucky day . Just had another crash out of the blue. New thread here:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=76042.0

Hopefully, this time you'll be able to get more out of the logfile.

Thanks for looking into this - and your patience

[Grenache]

Matt, I just had another crash that suits in to this thread. I was moving around in Theater View to change the zone and suddenly MC crashed. I think I managed to click on the zone I wanted and then the crash occurred, but I'm not sure.

However, this time I got a look at the dialog box.

First one (showing on the same monitor as Theater View) had the headline "MS Visual C++ Runtime Library" and then "Runtime Error!" with a reference to C:\Program Files\....\Media Center 18.exe.

Second dialog box (showing on my main monitor) was the usual "MC 18 stopped working".

I've mailed you a new log.

[Grenache]

MC just crashed again. This time the dialog box was black (I've seen this before) except for the same headline: "MS Visual C++ Runtime Library".

I've removed my multi-monitor application DisplayFusion to see if that was causing the crashes. We can rule that one out.