Computer freeze: Sounds like skipping record
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Hey all, The company I work for has custom kiosks that run software written by me and my team. The software has been running in it's current state now for a few months with a couple of issues found here and there, but nothing major. I have one unit that has recently started locking up. All the units are on our network. What we "see" is that the unit continues to have power (as the network shows the unit to still be online) but other than that it's dead to the world, with the screen frozen and a skipping sound like a broken record. While it looks "alive" the unit no longer responds to pings or anything else. Rebooting the unit gets it up and going again just fine but then it happens again. This has never happened in testing and it's never happened to any of our other units in the field. My boss is jumping down my back about it claiming it's a software problem. Now, this software (at least on the units) is really just a glorified Media Player (mostly showing Flash movies) written in VB.NET and C#. It does nothing at a level low enough to cause these problems that I can think of (unless Macromedia's Flash control is doing it). The machines run Windows 2000 professional and are all completely identical hardware and software, cloned off the same drive image. Does anyone have any suggestions for this kind of thing. I've told him I believe that the unit has a hardware problem... I mean, the problem is bad enough that not even Windows has a chance to log anything to the Event Logs. It's a total meltdown!
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Hey all, The company I work for has custom kiosks that run software written by me and my team. The software has been running in it's current state now for a few months with a couple of issues found here and there, but nothing major. I have one unit that has recently started locking up. All the units are on our network. What we "see" is that the unit continues to have power (as the network shows the unit to still be online) but other than that it's dead to the world, with the screen frozen and a skipping sound like a broken record. While it looks "alive" the unit no longer responds to pings or anything else. Rebooting the unit gets it up and going again just fine but then it happens again. This has never happened in testing and it's never happened to any of our other units in the field. My boss is jumping down my back about it claiming it's a software problem. Now, this software (at least on the units) is really just a glorified Media Player (mostly showing Flash movies) written in VB.NET and C#. It does nothing at a level low enough to cause these problems that I can think of (unless Macromedia's Flash control is doing it). The machines run Windows 2000 professional and are all completely identical hardware and software, cloned off the same drive image. Does anyone have any suggestions for this kind of thing. I've told him I believe that the unit has a hardware problem... I mean, the problem is bad enough that not even Windows has a chance to log anything to the Event Logs. It's a total meltdown!
Matt Philmon wrote: The machines run Windows 2000 professional and are all completely identical hardware and software, cloned off the same drive image. Sounds like some bad hardware, maybe you should clone one of the working ones and try it, otherwise you may want to start testing hardware. -:suss:Matt Newman / Windows XP Activist:suss:
"Well, the guy that's giving you a hard time is a f***in moron, and you can tell him thats straight from another Linux user." - John Simmons on Linux Users
Just do the American thing and shoot him... - Jim Crafton on Linux Users
...no matter where you wear your towel, the law is the law... - Christian Graus on the law -
Hey all, The company I work for has custom kiosks that run software written by me and my team. The software has been running in it's current state now for a few months with a couple of issues found here and there, but nothing major. I have one unit that has recently started locking up. All the units are on our network. What we "see" is that the unit continues to have power (as the network shows the unit to still be online) but other than that it's dead to the world, with the screen frozen and a skipping sound like a broken record. While it looks "alive" the unit no longer responds to pings or anything else. Rebooting the unit gets it up and going again just fine but then it happens again. This has never happened in testing and it's never happened to any of our other units in the field. My boss is jumping down my back about it claiming it's a software problem. Now, this software (at least on the units) is really just a glorified Media Player (mostly showing Flash movies) written in VB.NET and C#. It does nothing at a level low enough to cause these problems that I can think of (unless Macromedia's Flash control is doing it). The machines run Windows 2000 professional and are all completely identical hardware and software, cloned off the same drive image. Does anyone have any suggestions for this kind of thing. I've told him I believe that the unit has a hardware problem... I mean, the problem is bad enough that not even Windows has a chance to log anything to the Event Logs. It's a total meltdown!
That sounds like my Win2K Server box. Ever since the last Windows Update it has frozen every two days or so - still running, no error messages, no shortage of resources, but no response to any input until it is rebooted. I know the update damaged at least one driver, but have no way to determine what other corruption it caused. In your case, though, this does sound like a hardware issue, unless some of the software has become damaged. The first thing I'd do is make another disk clone and swap it into the unit. If the problem goes away, the software was probably damaged, possibly the drive itself is broke. If not, start looking at hardware very closely. I'd begin with audio/video cards, as these are almost always a pain in the arse. If you're using one of those integrated, all-in-one MBs, though, you're probably screwed - the whole thing will have to be replaced if any part of it fails. If you can do so, I'd monitor the power supply too. They're all made offshore now, and the quality sucks. Failure rates on power supplies are far higher now than ever before. "How many times do I have to flush before you go away?" - Megan Forbes, on Management (12/5/2002)
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Hey all, The company I work for has custom kiosks that run software written by me and my team. The software has been running in it's current state now for a few months with a couple of issues found here and there, but nothing major. I have one unit that has recently started locking up. All the units are on our network. What we "see" is that the unit continues to have power (as the network shows the unit to still be online) but other than that it's dead to the world, with the screen frozen and a skipping sound like a broken record. While it looks "alive" the unit no longer responds to pings or anything else. Rebooting the unit gets it up and going again just fine but then it happens again. This has never happened in testing and it's never happened to any of our other units in the field. My boss is jumping down my back about it claiming it's a software problem. Now, this software (at least on the units) is really just a glorified Media Player (mostly showing Flash movies) written in VB.NET and C#. It does nothing at a level low enough to cause these problems that I can think of (unless Macromedia's Flash control is doing it). The machines run Windows 2000 professional and are all completely identical hardware and software, cloned off the same drive image. Does anyone have any suggestions for this kind of thing. I've told him I believe that the unit has a hardware problem... I mean, the problem is bad enough that not even Windows has a chance to log anything to the Event Logs. It's a total meltdown!
but other than that it's dead to the world, with the screen frozen and a skipping sound like a broken record. That sound sure "sounds" to me like a flaky drive. Just for fun, find a used CD-R, and scratch it up. Place that in your CD-ROM, fire it up and see how many problems you get. I have seen a number of problems magically fix themselves by removing a scratched CD from the drive. If a CD can cause that much flakiness, just imagine what a bad spot on the HD can do. Shawn
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Hey all, The company I work for has custom kiosks that run software written by me and my team. The software has been running in it's current state now for a few months with a couple of issues found here and there, but nothing major. I have one unit that has recently started locking up. All the units are on our network. What we "see" is that the unit continues to have power (as the network shows the unit to still be online) but other than that it's dead to the world, with the screen frozen and a skipping sound like a broken record. While it looks "alive" the unit no longer responds to pings or anything else. Rebooting the unit gets it up and going again just fine but then it happens again. This has never happened in testing and it's never happened to any of our other units in the field. My boss is jumping down my back about it claiming it's a software problem. Now, this software (at least on the units) is really just a glorified Media Player (mostly showing Flash movies) written in VB.NET and C#. It does nothing at a level low enough to cause these problems that I can think of (unless Macromedia's Flash control is doing it). The machines run Windows 2000 professional and are all completely identical hardware and software, cloned off the same drive image. Does anyone have any suggestions for this kind of thing. I've told him I believe that the unit has a hardware problem... I mean, the problem is bad enough that not even Windows has a chance to log anything to the Event Logs. It's a total meltdown!
Believe it or not, but my old AMD's core chipped marginally and infact the only problems it exposed was with MMX and 3DNow operation. JPG's would look like acid trips, while sound was crackling and softer than usaul, other than that the machine behaved fine. WebBoxes - Yet another collapsable control, but it relies on a "graphics server" for dynamic pretty rounded corners, cool arrows and unlimited font support.
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Hey all, The company I work for has custom kiosks that run software written by me and my team. The software has been running in it's current state now for a few months with a couple of issues found here and there, but nothing major. I have one unit that has recently started locking up. All the units are on our network. What we "see" is that the unit continues to have power (as the network shows the unit to still be online) but other than that it's dead to the world, with the screen frozen and a skipping sound like a broken record. While it looks "alive" the unit no longer responds to pings or anything else. Rebooting the unit gets it up and going again just fine but then it happens again. This has never happened in testing and it's never happened to any of our other units in the field. My boss is jumping down my back about it claiming it's a software problem. Now, this software (at least on the units) is really just a glorified Media Player (mostly showing Flash movies) written in VB.NET and C#. It does nothing at a level low enough to cause these problems that I can think of (unless Macromedia's Flash control is doing it). The machines run Windows 2000 professional and are all completely identical hardware and software, cloned off the same drive image. Does anyone have any suggestions for this kind of thing. I've told him I believe that the unit has a hardware problem... I mean, the problem is bad enough that not even Windows has a chance to log anything to the Event Logs. It's a total meltdown!
I concur with other opinions that this is very likely a hardware problem. If you turn off enhanced/DMA IDE modes on your hard drive then use media player with lots of disk access, you can get a similar, but not so profound, effect. Regardless, it WILL BE cheaper just to swap out the computer component and if your boss doesn't understand that, he doesn't understand opportunity cost, business and customer relations; when customers see that kiosk, they're going to think you guys are a bunch of idiots with no credibility.
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Believe it or not, but my old AMD's core chipped marginally and infact the only problems it exposed was with MMX and 3DNow operation. JPG's would look like acid trips, while sound was crackling and softer than usaul, other than that the machine behaved fine. WebBoxes - Yet another collapsable control, but it relies on a "graphics server" for dynamic pretty rounded corners, cool arrows and unlimited font support.
Problems like that are so hard to figure out, once I had a CD-ROM oveheating (yes overheating) If I used any programs that accessed a CD or ran off the CD the whole system would crash and audio was just horrible. -:suss:Matt Newman / Windows XP Activist:suss:
"Well, the guy that's giving you a hard time is a f***in moron, and you can tell him thats straight from another Linux user." - John Simmons on Linux Users
Just do the American thing and shoot him... - Jim Crafton on Linux Users
...no matter where you wear your towel, the law is the law... - Christian Graus on the law