Oliver Blatt Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 Well, I think the time is finally coming where I have to replace my show computer. Yesterday I happened to be arriving home at exactly the right time to watch the show go into startup mode. As I sat in the driveway watching the seconds tick down to startup (yes, I make sure my show starts EXACTLY on time!) I sat and waited, and waited, and waited. Interesting...as the show was running fine at least two nights earlier when I was last home to watch it. I came in the house and turned on the the computer monitor to see a blue screen of death saying something about recovering for a fatal error and windows needing to close. I rebooted, and started the control panel and enabled the schedule. The computer said the show was running, and I verified that the lights were on. However, maybe 20 minutes later, the lights weren't on! So I disabled and enabled the schedule again and the show seemed to run fine. Tonight, the show started up just fine (it is a static display before the musical show starts later in the evening), but when I got home again the musical show was running, but the audio was really glitchy. That being said, the lights were in perfect sync with the music, but as a professional musician, I was just about going crazy listening to the playback. I came in the house, rebooted the computer, and the show had the same issues...glitchy audio. Ahh. I did some cleaning of the computer (not much, as it's a stripped down older computer that only has LOR and Firefox installed on it running Win XP. Not even connected to the internet except when downloading LOR software!) and did a reboot. When the computer rebooted, the windows login sound played...and that was also glitchy! I restarted the schedule, and the music started, but the lights didn't turn on, so I disabled and enabled the schedule again and now the show is running, but still with glitchy audio. I did look at task manager and when the show is running I am using between 8% and 11% CPU. The computer is not on the internet so there shouldn't have been any drivers that tried to update but failed. While this post is more of a vent to (hopefully!) sympathetic ears, for all you computer gurus out there, is there anything I should check on the computer before I just invest in a new machine? I realize the current machine is 15 years old and has served me well for the past few years, but maybe it's time. Thanks for listening, and I hope everyone else is having a better night in light show land than I am at the moment! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orville Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 9 minutes ago, Oliver Blatt said: Well, I think the time is finally coming where I have to replace my show computer. Yesterday I happened to be arriving home at exactly the right time to watch the show go into startup mode. As I sat in the driveway watching the seconds tick down to startup (yes, I make sure my show starts EXACTLY on time!) I sat and waited, and waited, and waited. Interesting...as the show was running fine at least two nights earlier when I was last home to watch it. I came in the house and turned on the the computer monitor to see a blue screen of death saying something about recovering for a fatal error and windows needing to close. I rebooted, and started the control panel and enabled the schedule. The computer said the show was running, and I verified that the lights were on. However, maybe 20 minutes later, the lights weren't on! So I disabled and enabled the schedule again and the show seemed to run fine. Tonight, the show started up just fine (it is a static display before the musical show starts later in the evening), but when I got home again the musical show was running, but the audio was really glitchy. That being said, the lights were in perfect sync with the music, but as a professional musician, I was just about going crazy listening to the playback. I came in the house, rebooted the computer, and the show had the same issues...glitchy audio. Ahh. I did some cleaning of the computer (not much, as it's a stripped down older computer that only has LOR and Firefox installed on it running Win XP. Not even connected to the internet except when downloading LOR software!) and did a reboot. When the computer rebooted, the windows login sound played...and that was also glitchy! I restarted the schedule, and the music started, but the lights didn't turn on, so I disabled and enabled the schedule again and now the show is running, but still with glitchy audio. I did look at task manager and when the show is running I am using between 8% and 11% CPU. The computer is not on the internet so there shouldn't have been any drivers that tried to update but failed. While this post is more of a vent to (hopefully!) sympathetic ears, for all you computer gurus out there, is there anything I should check on the computer before I just invest in a new machine? I realize the current machine is 15 years old and has served me well for the past few years, but maybe it's time. Thanks for listening, and I hope everyone else is having a better night in light show land than I am at the moment! Might try this for a replacement: Lenovo ThinkPad 11e 11.6" Laptop Computer Refurbished - Black Intel Celeron N2920 Processor 1.86GHz; 2GB RAM; 16GB Flash Storage; Intel HD Graphics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilMassey Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 That's a Chromebook. Won't run lor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ItsMeBobO Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 Sometimes the audio levels get reset to 100% after a reboot. Check your volume mixer to be sure you are not over driving the transmitter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dibblejr Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 7 minutes ago, ItsMeBobO said: Sometimes the audio levels get reset to 100% after a reboot. Check your volume mixer to be sure you are not over driving the transmitter. Bingo While recovering from my crash I was using my show computer in garage to listen to music while soldering. Totally forgot. Was playing the show and every time the Greatest Show Played through my car or handheld radio it sounded crappy. Figured radio batteries. Changed but the quality didn’t. Two days later it dawned on me about the computer volume level and my Rangestar transmitter. The Greatest Show already had enough base to create the cracking effect in the radio station. I turned the volume on my show laptop down - like magic. JR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oliver Blatt Posted December 11, 2018 Author Share Posted December 11, 2018 It's definitely not an issue with overdriving the transmitter or speakers. I've dealt with that already and it's a different sound. I did double check by removing the transmitter from the mix, and going straight into the speakers I use when sequencing, and it glitches all the time even during super soft sections. And for some reason, I think I'm the only guy in the world who gets great results running the computer audio at 100% and the transmitter at 25%. Anything higher on the transmitter and I overdrive the audio...even with the computer turned down to 50% or lower sound volume. At least the show is running, but I think I'll be replacing the computer very quickly before it goes down for good. While I have most material backed up already, I'll back up the most recent sequencing changes that I did last week tonight once the static show ends for the night. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr Grunts Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 Sorry to say but yes a new computer is the fastest fix. What it sounds like and the age of your laptop I would say a hardware failure. Could be sound card , HD or and I had this problem. The USB port your using is failing or has something in it touching something else. My USB port was intermediate with working and not working. After a lot of trouble shooting I had someone say something about my USB port. Replaced it and I was all good. Hope this helps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDucks Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 Sometimes a good cleaning INSIDE is what is needed. Lint and dust clog the CPU and GPU fins, fan blades. If your computer sits near the floor: Do every 6 months. While it is open: Watch every fan start up. They should instantly and SMOOTHLY go the normal speed. Remember there is a fan in the internal PSU. (I have lost more video cards to bad fans (failed without warning. The cooked chip was my warning While in there. Look at the tops of the can style Capacitors (they usually have an embossed X). If they are domes you have 'Bulging Caps' and need to do something NOW (you might replace 1 or 2, but any more. replace the mother board or the whole system) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oliver Blatt Posted December 11, 2018 Author Share Posted December 11, 2018 Thanks for all the suggestions. I did clean inside the computer last year when I thought it was DOA, because it wasn't recognizing the memory card. Gave everything a good cleaning and I was back in business. I remembered that I have a spare computer at work that I can "borrow" for the rest of the season, and I'll wait to purchase a new machine until after the season is over. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orville Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 14 hours ago, PhilMassey said: That's a Chromebook. Won't run lor. Sorry about that, it sounded like it could if the OS was or could be replaced with Windows. Personally I never heard of the "Google Chrome OS", Google Chrome Internet browser yes, but when I first noticed it stated Google Chrome OS, I thought that had to be an error. I guess it wasn't! I had thought about one, but if the Google garbage isn't replaceable with another OS, then it's definitely a no go for me as well. Glad I never bought one, was thinking about it, but knowing it won't run LOR makes it totally useless as far as I'm concerned {at least FOR ME!}. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilMassey Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 Actually a Chromebook is a very secure platform, and much less complex than Windows for many users who predominantly do browsing, Email and perhaps a few documents. If you don't NEED Windows, it's not a bad choice. Of course if you are paranoid about Google, then it's probably not for you. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, what's the difference? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orville Posted December 11, 2018 Share Posted December 11, 2018 17 minutes ago, PhilMassey said: Actually a Chromebook is a very secure platform, and much less complex than Windows for many users who predominantly do browsing, Email and perhaps a few documents. If you don't NEED Windows, it's not a bad choice. Of course if you are paranoid about Google, then it's probably not for you. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, what's the difference? Everything I use, audio/music editors, games I may play at times, LOR, video editors are all Windows based, so Windows it has to be for me, everything I use is Windows based software. So a Google OS won't work for me. And I'm not fond of any of the OS systems in all honesty, they all have their issues, but I especially do not like Google for my own reasons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oliver Blatt Posted December 12, 2018 Author Share Posted December 12, 2018 So I actually was able to sit and watch/listen to a good chunk of the shows tonight...and it was interesting. For the most part, the show played as expected, with the music still glitching. And glitching isn't exactly the right word. It's more like playback is slowing down, so songs are playing longer and slower. During one song (and it only did it one time during the entire night) the playback just about crawled to a halt. I thought the show would crash, but after about 10 seconds of playback slowing down and and speeding up before slowing down even more, playback finally resumed its "glitchy" but almost normal playback for the rest of the night. My show has a filler sequence between show that is static lights with music playing, and then 4 sequenced songs. The filler is 6 minutes long, and the four songs are about 13 minutes long to give a grand total of about 19 minutes. I have my schedule timed to go into shutdown as the last of the four songs plays. Tonight, the first of the four songs was playing as the show entered shutdown mode...by my calculations, that means that there was enough slowing/glitching of the playback to add about 12-13 minutes to the shows over the course of 4 hours! Yikes! Again, I'm pretty sure my solution is to replace the computer, but I thought you might be interested to hear what I discovered tonight! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilMassey Posted December 12, 2018 Share Posted December 12, 2018 If I had to guess, I would say the hard drive is dying a slow death. Trying to read bad or hard to read sectors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oliver Blatt Posted December 12, 2018 Author Share Posted December 12, 2018 7 minutes ago, PhilMassey said: If I had to guess, I would say the hard drive is dying a slow death. Trying to read bad or hard to read sectors. If that's the case, this will be my second hard drive failure in two months! My work laptop just got a new hard drive at the end of October! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDucks Posted December 12, 2018 Share Posted December 12, 2018 1 hour ago, Oliver Blatt said: If that's the case, this will be my second hard drive failure in two months! My work laptop just got a new hard drive at the end of October! If it has not failed. CLONE IT NOW. DO NOT DEFRAG. That is like putting a heart attack patient on a treadmill 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oliver Blatt Posted December 13, 2018 Author Share Posted December 13, 2018 Came home tonight to audio randomly cutting out, or lights randomly freezing. I messed around with the old tower I brought home from work (there was a reason we weren't using it anymore!) for about 30 minutes and decided the best bet was to drive to the local big-box store and invest in a new show computer. An hour later, and all is well in the lightorama world! Back up and running...and wow, these songs sound fast after the past few days of slowing playback! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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