Computer lockup

[Nightlight57]

I was running XP on a Dell laptop (Vista)with Light-O-Rama Ver 2.9.4. Ran fine for July 4th shows (first time user/32 channels). After first night's Halloween show, wouldn't start the next night. Had to do a hard restart to get it going. The next night it again would not start and after doing a hard restart, got an error message that no hard drive was installed and no operating system. Laptop completely dead! After some cussing and high blood pressure, I downloaded the LOR III software on my desktop (Vista)and completely started over installing USB device and all the sequences etc. Set up the show and schedule and started it up. Finished that night (about 1 hour) and seemed to be fine so I assumed it was the laptop. Guess again, after the show did not start tonight, I found out the LOR System Tray Icon would not respond and again had to hard restart. After many errors and much anxiety, the computer did a system restore to an earlier point which un-installed the LOR software. Computer running good now but afraid to download software again for fear that it will ruin this computer. I didn't change anything between the July 4th shows and now. :( We have put several hundred hours into building the graveyard props etc. for this show and am sick that we now have this problem. Not to mention the money (now 64 channels). Any help would be appreciated!!

[TJ Hvasta]

NightLight.. ok, a few options.. FIRST, I would make sure you have a up-to-date antivirus and anti-spyware programs on the working computer, run full scans (ya never know!!).. ok, next.. Is your Vista all patched, up-to-date also?

What else is running in the background?

1) look on the LOR Software page and find a version earlier than 2.9.4. download and install but not too early.. one or two steps before 2.9.4, not really any earlier.

2) When did you buy your S2 (2.9.4)? Are you eligible to move up to S3? If you are, I would d/l S3 (v3.0.2) and try that. A WHOLE LOT of people are running S2 and S3 without any crashing/hardware-destroying behavior. One thing, when did you do your last backups on ALL those computers, the dead ones as well as the working ones?? Weekly, I hope!!

You think the computers "died" because of LOR (which is not very likely) really, there has to be something else going on. With the old desktop machine, does it turn on/power up? Did you check the power supplys? Unplug all the power cords from the peripherals inside (cd/dvd) and see if it powers. If it powers up but wont POST (Power On Self Test/normal beep), take out/unplug all the other extras (video/sound/network cards, hard drives and all but one memory stick. If it still wont POST, move the memory to the other slot and re-try. If it wont power on at all, its a Power Supply problem. A bad motherboard will usually power on but not POST.

Lastly, please put your hometown/state in your profile.. you satand a good chance of finding a LOR user close by if you do.

TJ

[Don]

Psst. TJ.. She's already tried S3.

Nightlight57 wrote:

I downloaded the LOR III software on my desktop (Vista)and completely started over installing USB device and all the sequences etc.

[-klb-]

Which RS-485 adapter are you using? If it is one of the USB ones, are you using one of the cables with the big ferrites tha LOR provides?

Do you have a shutdown sequence? If so, does it do anything to a greater extent than the main show? More dimming or shimmer, or doing that on channels that normally do not?

[Guest guest]

Had that happen on my laptop too, haven't tried S3 yet, waiting for the funds to upgrade to the SS software.

I ran the Pareto Virus Scan over my regular virus and spam checkers, it found I had a trojan in a cookie on the hard drive that my regular programs had OVERLOOKED!

So I cleaned out all my cookies off the computer, rebooted and no more problems. The sad thing was it attached itself to a cookie from the LOR site, and I know LOR didn't do it, but some other feind did.

I was getting no hard drive installed, no operating system at random, sometimes it'd boot, sometimes it wouldn't.

Don't recall what the trojan was that was found, but if you can get to your browsers cache and clean it out completely, it might help.

It did in my situation, but you could be having a different issue.

Also if you copied files to a CD or even an SD card and transferred files between the two computers, BOTH would get infected. Trojans and virii are nasty things and I'd love to see the idiots that create them shot and hung, not necessarily in that order!

[TJ Hvasta]

Sorry Don.. bad glasses.. the III looked like a 2

The thing that tells me it's likely a virus now is its migrating from machine to machine..

[Nightlight57]

OK guys thanks for all the posts, a little more information.

1. The desktop is a Dell Studio 540 with a Quad processor at 2.5 ghz and 6 gb of ram and a 64 bit operating system. All updates have been done. When purchased two years ago, it was a fairly high end computer at $1200.00. Windows Media Player 11.0.

2. After the hard restart, the computer did a POST and that's when it asked to do a system restore to an earlier point. It did not ask me to chose the restore point, but it took out the LOR software which had only been downloaded the day before so just about any restore point would have done that I assume. Computer seems to be running fine now.

3. I just started with LOR in May of this year, so I did download the S3 software on the desktop. I did a July 4th show that ran for over 2 weeks on the laptop without a hitch(S2.9.4), so the fact that I had these problems on the laptop was weird.

4. I have Webroot virus scan which is also current (I'm big on keeping everything current) and a full scan was done about 2 hours before the show was to start. The virus software had also updated just prior to the full scan.

5. The sequences were purchased and scanned while downloading and again after I downloaded them (scanned the folder I put them in). No signs of any viruses. I am a little paranoid of viruses as I've had a computer completely ruined by one in the past.

6. Had the LOR USB485B plugged into the front panel on the desktop and have seen some posts that refer to having problems with the USB locking things up.

7. After I first downloaded the S3 software and downloaded the sequences to the desktop, I set-up the show and scheduler and it started and ran the remainder of the show that night, about 1 1/2 hrs. It was the next night that it locked up, same as on the laptop. I had went in and changed a sequence slightly to add a lightning flash to an unused channel about an hour before the show was scheduled to start. It is set to run from 7 to 10 pm.

8. The laptop restarted once with much difficulty and an error message about a cable unplugged ( not sure exactly but seemed like an internal one) and now is toast.

9. The only change is I bought a HLLY FM transmitter to replace the LOR one which didn't perform well. This still works fine.

I hope this helps because I am really afraid to try it again. But when it did run it was so cool!!! Could changing that sequence while the scheduler was still running cause a problem?? Or the USB port?? Thanks for all your help!! It is truly appreciated!

[DanR]

If you believe your system is clean now (you still may want to scan with malwarebytes), remove your show computer from the internet and uninstall webroot. Try it out for a night or two.

As far as the laptop, it sounds like it has a failed hard drive.

Hope this helps,
Dan