show freezes/crashes once a night

[DavBro]

Well, I re-routed the power to the angel lift (garage door opener) and also unbundled some RS485 cables I had neatly tied together with power cables. So far, everything has been stable. Still waiting on the special USB able to arrive, but I think the primary problem was noise induction from the power to the RS485 cables.

db

[chris2k]

"LORMonitor has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

I do have the sheilded usb cable.

the show runs fine, plays about 4 cycles and then It seems to be freezing in the same place, right before "all i want for christmas is you" on the 4th time around lol

[Kevin N]

chris2k wrote:

I do have the sheilded usb cable.

As far as the cable goes...do you mean filtered? I had all kinds off odd this happen to me until I purchased the filtered USB cable.

I know this isn't the "cure all"...but I would definitely rule this out sooner than later.

[Panteradon]

I am also haveing this problem and it seems to be getting worse. Last year was flawless. Now I reboot at least once per day and sometimes twice as I have to reboot in the middle of the show.

LOR Monitor shows "[highlight= #88ff88]not[/highlight] [highlight= #ff88ff]responding[/highlight]" in task manager. I cannot kill it off with Task Manager either. MOst times, I have had to hard reboot the machine.


LOR needs to address this.

Don

[Panteradon]

First, I need to apologize to LOR for my comment that they should fix this. I now do not believe it is a LOR problem per say.

In a previous post, someone mentioned that they can "fix" the situation my unplugging the Cat-5 cable. I tried that ans sure enough, the LOR monitor starts to respond again.

So, the problem is in my Cat-5 cables I think. The one LONG cable I have in my setup in the 50 ft cable I got from light-o-rama last year. I had it bundled with my power wires last year so I do not believe this is the problem.

But, I added two more boxes this year. I used my own cables to link them together. One link from box 1 to box 2 is only 5 feet long and does not touch power cables. The other cable between box 2 and 3 is twenty feet long and IS bundled with many power cables. The cable does NOT say shielded on the package it came in and I suspect this may be the problem.

Thoughts?

Don

[Todd L]

I too am having the same problem of status window not responding and/or the show just dying. I have to restart the computer ever time it happens. Unplugging the USB does not help. I just installed 2.6.2 and same issue. I have a filtered USB adapter, brand new cat5 cables and updated to the new drivers. Did not have a problem last year with the old version, but since I upgraded I have had to constantly baby sit it.

[Noelb]

Update:



Running with all 3rd party services (including AV software and backup) disabled did not fix the problem for me. It ran great since my last post in this thread, but when I got home tonight (after dark, after show start time) the system was not responding. "LOR Monitor" showed as not responding, pulling the USB freed it up in Task Manager.

Interestingly though, this time I could not get the machine to recognize the USB at all after plugging it back into the same port---even after a couple reboots. I had to switch to using a USB port on the back of the computer instead. (I was using a front USB.)

After switching to a back USB port, everything came back to life.

Additional info - my CAT5 is *not* getting interference from power cords, the monitor, or any other item. The CAT5 is shielded and does not follow the same path to the control box.



This definitely appears to be a problem with XP and LOR 2.6.0. I am downloading 2.6.2 now - it just came out on Dec 3rd. Anyone tried this yet? Any luck? The link http://lightorama.com/help/index.html?whats_new.htm does not show anything new regarding XP....


For anyone using XP - I do not suggest upgrading to 2.6.x until this is figured out.....



Thanks,

Noel

[willys_1948]

I am experiencing this problem as well. The only thing about my setup that has changed from last year is the LOR software. It is exactly the same setup. Dedicated computer that does not get used for anything else.

LOR monitor by the clock is completely unresponsive. The shows stop playing. I unplug the USB cable and immediately I get an error. I plug the USB cable back in and launch the LOR monitor and all is well. I can't reproduce the issue on a regular basis. The first two nights, it locked up three times each night. The next couple days no issues. Yesterday it locked up once. Today it locked up once.

I have am using the USB and CAT 5 cable that came with my LOR purchase. I have even tried powering the FM transmitter with a powered USB hub instead of the computer.

[Kevin N]

I don't know about now...but the cable that LOR provides in the kit didn't used to be filtered. If this is still the case...I'd most definitely purchase a filtered USB cable first.

Just in case you might not know which one you have...the filtered cable has a "bead" at each end. They are available here:

http://store.lightorama.com/usbcausewius.html

or

http://store.lightorama.com/cableusbusb485.html


Hope this helps.

Kevin

[JeffF]

Jeffrey wrote:

Hmmm... almost the problem I'm having but not quite.

We are having 5 to 7 seconds of lights out a few times a night. The music still plays during this time but all the lights go off. Then when they start up, they start slowly almost like they are coming back online controller by controller.

Same computer as last year with the same sound card and setup. Only thing different is the software versions and that we increased from 176 to 256 channels this year. I've tested all our cables a couple times also because my gut was telling me "cable trouble". Haven't found the cause yet.

-Jeff

Just wanted to update this...

I'm 99% sure our problem is with the 4-channel capture card software we're using. I was letting people I know sign on during the show and watch the lights remotely and it seems like once there is "enough" people doing this, the resources on the computer aren't enough for LOR to run and it causes said 5-7 second hickup.

I've turned off this guest account in the capture card software and I haven't had the problem again(that I have noticed at least).

Stinks because we now have a 120FPS card and you really get a good feeling of the lights... I'm smelling computer upgrade for next year!!!

-Jeff

[willys_1948]

Thanks for the tip Kevin N. I have replaced the usb cable with a filtered usb cable. You are correct, the cable that came with my controller was not a filtered usb cable. I purchased about a year and a half ago. Worked flawlessly last year. I'll keep everyone posted if the lockup issue returns or not.

[Kevin N]

You're welcome, Willys. I've been there, done that. My first year was flawless...my second year, not so much. I had inquired with Dan about my "freeze-up" problem and he told me to try the filtered cable. I did the trick, as I have been "lock-up free" for 2 seasons.

I hope this does the trick for you (or anyone else with the aforementioned problem).

Kevin

[Salts]

I bought Ferite chokes to put on my cables. I also installed them on the audio cable going to my FM Transmitter. I use the Whole House Transmitter so I also put one on the USB power cord for that. It removed all noise problems that I was having. I bought the ferite chokes at Radio Shack.

[ItsMeBobO]

willys_1948 wrote:

I am experiencing this problem as well. The only thing about my setup that has changed from last year is the LOR software. It is exactly the same setup. Dedicated computer that does not get used for anything else.

LOR monitor by the clock is completely unresponsive. The shows stop playing. I unplug the USB cable and immediately I get an error. I plug the USB cable back in and launch the LOR monitor and all is well. I can't reproduce the issue on a regular basis. The first two nights, it locked up three times each night. The next couple days no issues. Yesterday it locked up once. Today it locked up once.

I have am using the USB and CAT 5 cable that came with my LOR purchase. I have even tried powering the FM transmitter with a powered USB hub instead of the computer.

Me too ! Several times. But I have a clue now. I have been running the show during the day to see if/when/why its locking up.


2:12:12 PM: ERROR PLAYING SEQUENCE (Invalid procedure call or argument

Trace: XmitData

Trace: FlushCB

Trace: BlockCommit



Twice now it happened while I was in the room plugging and unplugging power to other things on the same outlet. Just now it locked up when I plugged in the BetaBrite power supply. Last night it locked up when I was playing with the transmitter.

I have a very long unfiltered USB cable so I can move the usb485 between computers in the same room.

[chris2k]

My show is still freezing every night. I have the filtered cables. I upgraded to the latest version of lor 2.6.2.

It freezes in between songs. not in the middle of a song.

I have 2 different shows, that alternate every other night. Both of them freeze. The shows are about 1 hour long each. They play all the way through about 2 times and then the third time around is when it freezes.

Chris

[Panteradon]

I feel you pain Chris. My show is still freezing up. It seems to know when we are away for the night because avery time we come home at 9:30 or so the house is DEAD. Really frustrating after a flawless year last year.

[rjm12rjm12]

My show is crashing once a night also. At fist I thought it was my PC, but now reading this thread I see I am not alone. I have Win XP also. I usually have to reboot to get them to work again

[beeiilll]

I have to climb on board with this thread and also voice my concern with this problem.

I have a dedicated show computer that is not used for anything else. It worked without any problems last year.

This year I have gone from 80 channels to over 200 and I upgraded to verson 2.6.2 of LOR.

I do have the filtered USB cable to the 485 adapter. All the hardware is setup the same as last year except that I have a lot more controllers out there.

I noticed that the computer did a reboot about a week ago after the show had been running for over 2 hours. Then the night before last it rebooted right after the first song had played in the show and again about 10 minutes later. I shutdown Zara radio and my WeatherWatcher programs and the show ran for the rest of the evening without any troubles.

Last night I had Zara and the weather programs shutoff when the show started and everything ran fine.

Tonight I am going to try and let the computer run Zara and the weather program while the show runs and see. LOR monitor shows around 25,000 when the show is running and will drop back down some after it stops.

Pretty awakening to hear your computer going through a reboot while the show is supposed to be running! :shock:

Any ideas for things to watch for with this kind of problem? This is the first time I have ever had a computer reboot while just running along for no reason.

I do have a laptop machine that I have set up the sequences on and a spare 485 adapter that I am having next to the show computer "on standby" in case it happens again so that I can just fire up the laptop and run the shows from it, but I certainly want to find out why this is happening on my show machine. It is a 3GHz cpu with 2GB ram, Windows XP with service pack 3 and nothing other than LOR, Zara, avast Anti-Virus and Weather Watcher running most of the time although it is connected to the internet for the weather program to get updates.

In the past I have been able to even run the LOR sequence editor while the show was on and work on new stuff without any troubles.

Strange behavior now. I don't really see any large cpu usage or memory problems while the show is running, but will have to sit through one and see I guess.

I need a good logging program to try and trap whatever is causing the computer to reboot. Any suggestions?

[Noelb]

Hi beeiilll,



If your machine is rebooting on its own - then it sounds like something is corrupting the Windows kernel itself. Mine is hanging - then needing a manual reboot.

Do you have the machine set up to create a memory dump on reboot?

I am also using the shielded USB, and a shielded Cat 5. My cables do not run with the power lines. So I don't think it is an RF or interference issue. I also used MSConfig to turn off all services, including the AV software. My show machine sits in the garage, no internet connectivity. So I turned *everything* off. My machine is a 2GB RAM, 2.8 Ghz Celeron running XP SP3, with LOR 2.6.2 also. So I cannot imagine a resource issue - unless it is a memory leak.

My issue has subsided some, but not sure if it is coincidence only. Most recently - I had it down so it would only hang about twice a week ( a big improvement over original) . I currently have it to reboot daily with an autologon (search Microsoft web page for "Tweakui" or "autologons" for the autologon ). None of this has fixed the problem, but at least it is more consistent.

To get better logs of what is happening...... do you have the LOR logs? Does it give any errors? You can also use Performance Monitor (or its cousin PerfWiz) to track CPU and RAM usage. I had thought of doing this as well - but maybe after show season, too busy the last couple weeks to bother. PerfMon/PerfWiz will create a performance hit on the system if all counters are enabled (possibly compounding the problem while creating the logs).

[-klb-]

For those who are having the show hang, have you verified that the option for Holiday Light Designer on the LOR control panel is disabled?