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Show Computer Lock-ups every night....


cenote

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Talked to a few people behind the scenes around here, and struggling with this one.

I have an older show computer, about a 1.9ish hz with 1 meg, running xp SP2.

I am dealing with Lock-ups every night after the show ends. I have created schedules threw out the day, and runs fine. But seems to be doing something at night, and I can not figure out what's up, that causes S3 to lock up after midnight. First, it was the DMS protocol not loading right. So I gave up on that, for a bit, and unloaded the network setting for that. Now I just have normal LOR network controller running, (via serial port) and after the show sometime in the middle of the night, my machine either locks up, or lately, it says it can not find the hardrive that the show is located on for the next day. And even tonight, the show did not load, and I noticed that I could not right click the LOR tray button, nor could I restart my computer. It gave me a "YOU DO NOT HAVE PERMISSION" error. The &$%& I don't, power cord via outlet, I showed him! :)

The machine has not changed since last year, just upgrade the LOR software. I also do not use this computer, other than running shows. It is about the only thing running on it. I keep off all Defenders, virus programs, screen savers, power management, etc. I don't even have a virus program loaded in it since I formatted C: last year.

I am convinced that it something running in the background, or something eating up all its resources, just don't know where to look for it. Any Suggestions what to look for, or where to go?

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Software update typically kicks off about 3AM unless you disabled it.

Check Control Panels-->Administrative-->Services and turn off anything you don't need. Do a few, reboot, make sure everything still works. For a show computer, you need very very little in there.

Also check your power settings....no sleeping on the job for the show computer!

Other thing I recommend is get CCleaner. Use it to not only remove crap, from from the Tools section, you can get a pretty good handle on startup items (a lot area hidden, this gives a fairly safe front-end to edit the registry areas where they are located)

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Try the SP3 for XP, not sure if that will fix it but. Also, check your version of media player, make sure it's up to date also,

Bill

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No anti-virus at all?? Microsoft Security Essential is the best FREE AV you can find, followed by Malwarebytes Antimalware program (for spyware). Install both, run updates, then disconnect the network.. Run several scans, then when you're sure it's clean, try your show scheduler again.

NO ONE should ever run a machine without an AV program in place. Macs included!

As Josh said, check your Power Settings to make sure the hard drive doesnt go to sleep. The kids desktop computer would freeze at night when the hard drive went to standby. Disabled it, and the freezing went away.

And update XP to SP3.. thats the minimum you should be running too.

Get an AV program!

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  • 1 month later...

Having a similar issue with my show computer where it locks up around 0300. This is a new hard drive with a fresh xp pro sp3 all updates completed. Running the latest revision of LOR. Have disabled the antivirus and microsoft updates. No network attached. Dell optiplex 620 with 4GB of ram. Sure would like to run my show on this computer. I works fine on my other computer but I dont want to move it to the garage. The plan was to use the small form dell to run the shows.

Also have one circuit that does not shut off fully , so I have a string of lights that stays on very dim, regardless of whether a show is running or not. Didn't have this issue when I first fired up the show but last two nights it was very evident. I left the controller off overnight but I don't think it helped. Will check it tonight.

any help would be appreciated

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jallenl wrote:

Having a similar issue with my show computer where it locks up around 0300.  This is a new hard drive with a fresh xp pro sp3 all updates completed.  Running the latest revision of LOR.  Have disabled the antivirus and microsoft updates.  No network attached.   Dell optiplex 620 with 4GB of ram.   Sure would like to run my show on this computer.  I works fine on my other computer but I dont want to move it to the garage.  The plan was to use the small form dell to run the shows.  

Also have one circuit that does not shut off fully , so I have a string of lights that stays on very dim, regardless of whether a show is running or not.   Didn't have this issue when I first fired up the show but last two nights it was very evident.  I left the controller off overnight but I don't think it helped.  Will check it tonight.

any help would be appreciated


I'm still fighting this too, sounds like the same setup. Mine locks everyday too
Questions:
1) Are you running DMX? If so, do you have Listener on?
2) How many networks, and how many controllers on networks?

I ran across some others, that have had clitches when running a certain number of controllers on one network.

Chuck
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no DMX have 8 controllers and 1ccr on one network. Been watching the forum seems to be lots of people having this issue. This computer had the same issue with the old hard drive and 1gig of memory,

Luckily I bought a player for the controller and have been able to run my show without the computer. But that was not the plan

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Everything plays fine on my XPS gamer but the thing is huge and I dont want to put in the garage. Humidity is brutal in Houston area, not a computer friendly environment.

I was hoping someone would come up with a fix, I've tried everything except a registry edit and reinstall of LOR

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Thanks Mike. Perfect. I will give this a try. Was getting to the point of having to reboot the machine a hour before the show just to make sure it actually would run.

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Will not know until tomorrow. I'll load it as soon as my show ends in about 15 minutes. Will not know if the issue is fixed until 5pm tomorrow.

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