LOR Tray LOR Monitor Not responding?

[Garry]

LOR Tray & LOR Monitor Not responding?:?

We start up Shows by clicking on the light Bulb and the computer locks up with the above message in Windows Task Manger under Application. Sometimes the Shows runs a few sequences sometimes a complete show, sometimes it will not run at all? We have to restart the computer to releases the programs locked up and then reload the LOR control panel to try again. The computer is a Dell Latitude laptop D600, OS- XP pro, 1400 MHz, with 1 GB of ram and hardly anything in the computer.

Any ideas?:?

[cmoore60]

Just curious.

Did you build your shows with the simple show builder?

Chuck

[dstevens]

Sounds like it could be the USB hanging up. Do you have the filtered cable?

[Garry]

Chuck,

No I did not.

I just used Show Editor and then Schedule Editor.

Garry

[Garry]

dss90c

I just used the cables that LOR sent with

[dstevens]

Does the cable have the ferrite filters on it? Mine does not - I just ordered a new one with the filters to see if it stops the hang ups on my system.

[Garry]

dss90c

No, they do not have the ferrite filters on them.

I do have many clamp on type of ferrite filters here so I will try and place a few on the cad/control cables.

I do have a rats nest of cables going all over the place mixing the cad/control cables will the power cables.

Garry

[Michael B]

I'm having the same problem every so often. I had to reboot the computer and unplug my cat5 cable. I will follow this thread to see if there is a better solution. BTW, I haven't installed the latest upgrade. I was going to wait until after the season.

I seem to have more problems when I am clicking the LOR icon, in the system tray at the bottom of the screen, while the show is running or is waiting to run.

[Garry]

Michael B,

I have/had the same plan and am waiting to update the software until after Christmas. (maybe we will have to update the software sooner then latter?)

I have the LOR show running right now after installing 1 ferrite clamp by the computer and 1 on the in/out cat 5 cable by the rs485b box. The show ran about ½ way through (4 songs??) and stopped responding. So I just unplugged the cat5 cable after finally getting both of the LOR’s software shut off and out of the application system. Then repluged the cat5 cable back in and stated up the LOR control panel and the show has now run about 3 cycles of 9 songs without stopping so far??? I will place more ferrite wire clamp on’s later as we have a lot of snow here and I did not bring my booths along to go outside and tramp through and dig up all of the cat5 wires.

The stoppage is so sporadic it is hard to place a finger on the trouble, but I do have the Window task manager running so I can watch when the LOR stop responding.



I hope we can find a cure for this annoying problem!!

Garry

Darn it jworked for 4 shows now it just quit responding again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Garry]

Just talked with Dan of LOR and he said the problem is with the USB cable between the computer and the RS485b box. That cable needs to have filters on both ends and that they (USB cable) can be purchased from LOR as they have the correct filtering on them.

So I will try that and see if it fixes the problem.

Also noted that Dell laptop computers seem to be more susceptible to this problem as EMF in different frequencies can knock the USB drivers off and lockup the computer.

Garry

[Michael B]

Garry wrote:

Just talked with Dan of LOR and he said the problem is with the USB cable between the computer and the RS485b box. That cable needs to have filters on both ends and that they (USB cable) can be purchased from LOR as they have the correct filtering on them.

So I will try that and see if it fixes the problem.

Also noted that Dell laptop computers seem to be more susceptible to this problem as EMF in different frequencies can knock the USB drivers off and lockup the computer.

Garry

Garry,

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it. Please let me know if the filter cables do the trick.

Michael Beason

[Garry]

I ordered the new USB filter cable over with over night shipping put in the system.

The system ran about 10 minutes and stop responding.

Restarted and ran the system all day and everything worked then.

I started the show in the evening and it started stopping randomly again???

So LOR Dan this is NOT the fix on this system!:(:( :?

Garry

[LightORamaDan]

Okay... So something else is going on.. (we will refund the full order on that cable) but I am not sure now what is happening. You can try upgrading to the latest USB drivers at this link: http://www.lightorama.com/downloads/CDM_2.02.04.exe This file is an exe that just needs to be run (with the USB adapter removed). It will install USB drivers.

This is ther first time that I have seen a USB hang that the filtered cable did not resolve so my guess is that there is something else going on here.

Dan

[Garry]

Dan,

I loaded the new USB drivers now, restarted the computer ,and shows, I will have it running all day into this evening to see if it will keep responding?

Thank you for crediting the cost of the new cable.

I will keep you posted.

Garry

[Mike Berck]

I have had similar problems for three years, with LOR 1, LOR 2, and different computers, with the show completing one night but not starting the next evening, stopping mid-show, getting stuck on a sequence and repeating it mid-show, and other undesirable performance. The remedy each evening is to reboot the computer which takes longer than a normal reboot should (LORMonitor will not stop properly, even using the Task Manager). That is followed by the delay of retiming the show to start on the half hour schedule.

Then repeat the next evening.

It's a determined person that will do the same thing for weeks in a row, yet expect the good fortune of better performance at least once (and celebrate if it does).

I have finally put two and two together, remembering that I have had problems with some devices that I have attached to the USB ports on the front panel of my PC, such PDA "hot-sync" and others. The resolution to that was to use one of the back panel, motherboard-integrated USB ports. So after two full Christmas seasons and four weeks of aggravation during this Christmas, I have attached my USB-485 adapter to a back panel USB port, and the shows have been running flawlessly for days.

The front panel connector is on an internal extension cable, plus it's on an optional USB quad or dual controller which are, at least on my PC, handled differently (and apparently less reliably) by the device manager and driver.

I have no answer for laptop users but this is my take on desktop devices.

[rwalchli]

Interesting, I posted about this problem in another thread a while back which did not receive much attention.

I have the same issue as described in this thread and I also am using a Dell D600 computer and a filtered USB cable.

I get random lock-ups, sometimes twice a day, other times the system will run for two days with out a lockup.

When it is locked up, the red LEDs in the two LOR controllers are not flashing. I found by pulling the USB cable and reinserting, then disabling the show and re-enabling the show, it is back up and running.

The only other offering I have is that I have never experienced any issues with the USB ports on this machine which include devices like a mouse, external USB drives, thumb drives, and my iPod.

I would sure like to root cause this problem.

[Garry]

I am still having random anomalies of the annoying not responding.

That problem is not quiet as bad after purchasing a filter USB cable from LOR and installing the new drivers.

You are right about how to reset the computer by unhooking the USB cable and re-plugging it in and disabling the show and re-enabling the show.

I still have no idea other then some how EMF is getting into the computer through the USB port. I have tried everything short of placing the computer in a Faraday cage.

I have placed filters on the power supply cords and Cat5 cables as well.

I even moved my Ramsey FM-100 transmitter to another room and cabling away.

I also would like to find out what is causing these problems?

Garry

[Paul Roberson]

Mike Berck wrote:

I have had similar problems for three years, with LOR 1, LOR 2, and different computers, with the show completing one night but not starting the next evening, stopping mid-show, getting stuck on a sequence and repeating it mid-show, and other undesirable performance. The remedy each evening is to reboot the computer which takes longer than a normal reboot should (LORMonitor will not stop properly, even using the Task Manager). That is followed by the delay of retiming the show to start on the half hour schedule.

Then repeat the next evening.

It's a determined person that will do the same thing for weeks in a row, yet expect the good fortune of better performance at least once (and celebrate if it does).

I have finally put two and two together, remembering that I have had problems with some devices that I have attached to the USB ports on the front panel of my PC, such PDA "hot-sync" and others. The resolution to that was to use one of the back panel, motherboard-integrated USB ports. So after two full Christmas seasons and four weeks of aggravation during this Christmas, I have attached my USB-485 adapter to a back panel USB port, and the shows have been running flawlessly for days.

The front panel connector is on an internal extension cable, plus it's on an optional USB quad or dual controller which are, at least on my PC, handled differently (and apparently less reliably) by the device manager and driver.

I have no answer for laptop users but this is my take on desktop devices.

I have had hang up problems in the past (running AL, and once this year with LOR)and like you moved the USB-RS485 converter to another USB port fixed the problem.

[tsrail]

Sorry I missed this thread before Christmas....

I had issues during my Halloween show in 08 with the USB "locking up".



The show was set to autorun, and then would stop running sporatically. I could only end the program by unplugging the USB from the adapter. That would allow it to close, and I could restart until the next freeze.



After some playing around, I DOWNGRADED the USB drivers to an older version, and it worked flawlessly. For a few days. And then my stupid "show PC" (which hadn't been used in months) decided to upgrade to Windows XP SP3 overnight.



Well, the freezing began again the next day. I then re-loaded the USB driver to the original one (sorry-I didn't keep track of version numbers), and it worked again flawlessly again.



So - my experience is try different versions of the USB driver until one works with your setup, and turn off AutoUpdating of Windows components.



Hope this helps someone...

[rwalchli]

I have tried every version of the USB driver I could find for XP but none of the versions stopped the lockups.

I am currently running an older version of the serial/USB driver which I rolled back too using Windows roll back feature. This seems to have increased the time between lockups but did not stop the lockups.