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[nunisimo]

Hi.

I've been a very avid user of MC for over 2 years and have a general comment about its stability which really hasn't improved with successive versions.  My comparison is with Real Player and even MS player.  I encounter countless hangs, complete crashes, and just general performance issues.  I"m using the latest stable version of MC and wondering if there's a fundamental reason why MC is less stable then it's competitors.  The main reason I ask is that because I pay for MC while the other are free.  As an fyi, I have a toshiba tecra with 1 gig ram running at 1.4mghz.

Any general explanation would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[JimH]

Stability problems can be in many places.  Hardware manufacturers tend to find and fix driver problems that cause stability problems with Windows Media Player.

Have you updated Windows?  IE/Windows Update.

What version of Windows?

Some things you could experiment with as a test, just to rule them out.  Uninstall third party plug-ins.  Do not use visualizations or 3d effects.  Try switching playback from wav out to direct sound or vice versa.  Eliminate dependency on a network connection (use a local library).

[Omni]

Hey, nunisimo, if you are really serious about verifying the stability of your system, do the following.

First, download and run memtest86+.  Run at least the standard tests (takes about 15 minutes or so depending on your memory speed), but ideally, run all the tests overnight.

After you have verified without question that your memory is stable, then download and run Prime95 overnight.  Ideally, you should let it run for a full 24 hours!  At the very least, let it run overnight for 12 hours.  (I can easily get it to fail in 8 hours, so I wouldn't use the suggested "6 hour mininum" as a measure of success.)

Now, this is really only scratching the surface.  Once your CPU, memory, and chipset are verified to be rock-solid stable (using the above two tests), there are yet more torture tests available to test out the other components of your system.

Though it's only my opinion, only after you do the above do you have a right to come in here and claim stability issues with the software. (This applies to all software, not just Media Center.)

[JimH]

Thanks, Omni.  I just added your post at the bottom of the FAQ here:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=10029&start=0

[Omni]

[JimH]

And hey, nunismo, it still could be our problem.  It's possible.

[Jaguu]

I do not accept Omni's ideas of running stability tests over long hours overnight.

I think there is a much simpler approach to that:

1) If a system is really unstable, then most applications would suffer some way and would become unstable.

2) If you install a virgin XP-SP2 system with the newest audio and sound drivers, install MS Office and a few other basics apps (Firewall, Antivirus, WinZip, Adobe Reader, Backup, MS Office 2003) and MC11 still crashes, then with the greatest probability MC11 might be the culprit.

3) Until 11.0.64 MC11 was pretty stable, although up to then I used it mainly for playback. Starting with 11.0.70 I ripped about a dozen cd's, re-ripped another 2 dozens and imported many new images doing plenty of tagging. It was at that point that MC11 started to crash on a quite regular basis (with the old 2 years old setup and also with the freshly installed XP-SP2.

4) I feel that for beta testing MC11 should have some kind of debug option that can be turned on in case of need and automatic reports go directly to J River.
I read somewhere that Microsoft gets nowadays most of the bugs from Windows and their programs from their built-in automatic error reporting system and not from beta testers any longer. A beta tester's view in some way is always quite subjective and also error-prone  

[bbrip]

I am afraid to say, but I am having xcountless stability issues as well, particulary around ripping CD's and converting files.

* Heavy Crash (Bluescreen!) when I try to rip

* Crash when I try to convert from WAV to APE.

I am doing this all externellay now, but it is a pain in the neck to do that and then import, tag manually.

WOuld really appreciate for this to get looked at.

[KingSparta]

Jaguu

You Forgot New Video Drivers And That Is One Of The Main Reasons I Have Seen Users Having A Crashing Problem.

[Jaguu]

King,

you may be right, but on  my old installation I had the same video driver for almost one year.

[JimH]

1) If a system is really unstable, then most applications would suffer some way and would become unstable.

This isn't true.  Each application uses the system differently.  The fact that problems are associated with only a single application means one of two things.

A.  That the application has a problem
or
B.  That the application uses the system in such a way as to uncover a problem somewhere else -- memory, for example, or a particular piece of driver code.

This is one of the most common misperceptions around.

But, as I said above, the problem could be ours.

[Jaguu]

I have been playing music  for the last 4 hours without any crash (in mimimized mode) - so playback seems to be OK. It is the ripping and tagging and sometimes just sitting around idle that causes the crashes.

[sirshambling]

My MC instability relates to CD burning - I'm running version 161 on Win XP Home SP2.

Whether I put a blank CD in the burner before clicking on "Burn CD" in the AW or not, MC hangs completely after clicking "next" when "audio CD" appears in the AW.

After using Task Manager to close MC down (often taking 3/4 attempts), restarting MC causes no problems with a burn.

R/clicking "send to" with the files I want to burn also causes this hang.

These are all bog standard MP3 CBR files.

[modelmaker]

In ancient days when I was running winME, I had stability problems with MC and only MC. WMP & winamp &  MMJB & real all ran fine until my library got to over 5000 files, then I had slow-down probs etc. with everything but MC.

When I switched to win2k all the stability issues went away. I've had one blue screen crash in 1 1/2 years and that had nothing to do with MC.

I haven't heard about any real stability issues with MC 9 or 10 here in the forum. Now if you're using MC 11 you could expect some problems from time to time as MC 11 is still in alpha/beta form. Although there have been issues with some of the features in MC 11, there haven't really been stability problems for quite a while. Most (not all) of these types of problems do tend to be user or machine malfuctions.

Comparing MC to the previously mentioned players is comparing apples and oranges. MC does some complicated stuff. It's not for everybody. There's a definite learning curve here and what problems there are usually solved by the excellent community here.

You get what you pay for. MC encourages user participation, the other for the most part do not.    MC's the most customizable player/organizer out there. Period.

[nunisimo]

hi.

thank you.. that was a very good explanation.  i think it's the complciated stuff that the others don't have that causes some stability issues.

[Omni]

I do not accept Omni's ideas of running stability tests over long hours overnight.

I think there is a much simpler approach to that:

1) If a system is really unstable, then most applications would suffer some way and would become unstable.

2) If you install a virgin XP-SP2 system with the newest audio and sound drivers, install MS Office and a few other basics apps (Firewall, Antivirus, WinZip, Adobe Reader, Backup, MS Office 2003) and MC11 still crashes, then with the greatest probability MC11 might be the culprit.

3) Until 11.0.64 MC11 was pretty stable, although up to then I used it mainly for playback. Starting with 11.0.70 I ripped about a dozen cd's, re-ripped another 2 dozens and imported many new images doing plenty of tagging. It was at that point that MC11 started to crash on a quite regular basis (with the old 2 years old setup and also with the freshly installed XP-SP2.

4) I feel that for beta testing MC11 should have some kind of debug option that can be turned on in case of need and automatic reports go directly to J River.
I read somewhere that Microsoft gets nowadays most of the bugs from Windows and their programs from their built-in automatic error reporting system and not from beta testers any longer. A beta tester's view in some way is always quite subjective and also error-prone  

I won't get into all the flaws in your argument about what constitutes a stable system or not, but do keep in mind that I posted this to nunisimo who stated that he has been having stability issues for two years with every MC build.  

[JustinChase]

nunismo,

did this help pinpoint a problem for you?  is all well now?