Print

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

[calculadoru]

Everything is as it should be, Windows Defender all set up to not disturb MC26, the computer is the same machine that ran previous versions with no issues. Syncing handheld? Hang. Playing music while syncing handheld?  Simply playing 100 random songs? Hang. Minimise main window while playing so you can open a browser window, then try to return to MC26? . Minimise main window while playing audio then breathing upon keyboard followed by an attempt to open main window again? Hang.

[mwillems]

One thing not clear from your post is what these crashes look like; does MC just disappear with an error message (i.e. a true crash)?  Or is it a "hang" with a white screen where task manager offers to kill MC because it's unresponsive?

I see almost none of the first kind of crashes, but I do see some hangs when using handheld sync functions.  The main "culprit" I suspect is slow disk I/O; when MC is talking to a handheld or a network drive, the slowness of the I/O will frequently hang MC during handheld sync, but sometimes with other functions.  In those cases, though, if I wait MC eventually starts responding again (it may take a minute or two though).  The issue is particularly acute with handheld sync, and I can 100% reproduce a hang in those cases even when trying to sync a local drive as a "handheld" so I suspect there's just something in the handheld code that blocks the UI.

If you're seeing actual crashes to desktop though, that's a whole 'nother thing that I can't speak to.

[JimH]

Your machine may have problems.

Please describe your setup in detail.

Have you been here?

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,114101.0.html

[JimH]

I'm going to add some diagnosis procedure here.

Have you configured Windows Defender?

Are you using any other antivirus.  If so, uninstall it, just to test.

Does it behave the same way on another machine?

Is the media on a local library?  Or is it on a NAS or USB drive?

What type of files?

What OS?  Is it up to date?

Are your drivers up to date?

Try turning off auto-import in the Tools menu.

What are you playing to?   How is it connected?  Test playback to another device.  Switch among audio via ASIO, HDMI, and Direct Sound.

These may help narrow the source of the problem.

mwillems' question about hang vs. crash is important.  Does the program disappear?  That's a crash.  If it just freezes, that's a  hang.

[calculadoru]

Hi, and thank you all for the feedback.
The computer runs Win 10 with the latest updates, on a Ryzen 5 2600X CPU and 16 GB of RAM, which also has a GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB video card - the hardware is stable and no other programs ever hang or crash.
Windows Defender is configured as advised on the forums, on all the relevant folders.
The same machine, without any tweaks to Windows Defender, ran MC25 for a year with zero issues, rock stable and reliable - as soon as I upgraded to MC26, issues began and persist to this day. I have also made sure to uninstall MC25, its database, created a new library in MC26, etc. - to no avail.

To clarify - the issue is not crashes, but system hangs. They are frequent and super-annoying - MC will hang and become unresponsive while the PC is doing nothing much at all, and it either takes it minutes to recover, or it doesn't and needs to be force-closed. If the issue were always the same, it would be easy to post the logs here and maybe ask for advice - problem is, it's always something else, and the frequency is totally random. If I were to guess, it is probably an issue with RAM management in MC26, but I am not an expert; all I can say for certain is that MC25 runs with zero issues on the same PC that MC26 seems to have trouble with.

I have also had the same issues with 26 on a different (much less powerful) mini-PC that I use as a HTPC, to the point where I rolled back to 25 on that one, while trying to figure out what is happening with MC26 on my main machine.

I have been using MC since version 12 or so, and more often than not this problem has happened when upgrading - the new version is terribly unstable for the longest time, until things settle down and then it works great. I live in hope that the same will be true for MC26 soon - and thanks again for the responses, much appreciated.

[JimH]

Turn off auto import, lyrics lookup, thumbnailing, etc.

Please report the full version you're using.

[BigSpider]

Have you tamed windows defender specifically for MC26 or did you do that for mc 25?  Windows sees them as completely different programs.

[calculadoru]

Update to 26.0.106 seems to have made the dreaded hangs go away, without any changes to the setup. Fingers crossed it stays this way, and many thanks to the devs for actively following up on all the things in the forums.

As a side note though - after so many versions of MC, I do find it quite odd that in order to fix instability issues one is advised to turn off essential parts of the program:
- library on NAS seems to be a no-no, although it worked fine before; it should make no difference where media files are stored, surely
- auto-import never had any trouble at all
- same with thumbnails and other proposed fixes when issues are reported.

Windows Defender settings now becoming an absolute must is another irritating thing - I have used multiple versions of MC over the years, yet changing the anti-virus settings was never required. Quite why MC26 should not be able to play media files if Windows Defender, or any other AV program, is on and running in the background like it is supposed to do, remains a mystery. MC25 worked absolutely fine on the same machine with the same library and without any tweaks to Windows Defender.

Anyhow - here's hoping these are growing pains, and as I said, 26.0.106 is solid so far, never hangs or causes any issues. Thanks again for everything,
D

[mwillems]

As a side note though - after so many versions of MC, I do find it quite odd that in order to fix instability issues one is advised to turn off essential parts of the program:
- library on NAS seems to be a no-no, although it worked fine before; it should make no difference where media files are stored, surely
- auto-import never had any trouble at all
- same with thumbnails and other proposed fixes when issues are reported.

Jim wasn't advising that you turn all those things off permanently, but rather that you should try disabling them temporarily to see if turning any one of those off suddenly made the problem go away.  If, say, turning off autoimport made the problem stop happening, that would help the devs figure out what was causing the problem.  Think of it as "differential diagnosis."