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PC @ Transmitter Site...locking up.

D

duckfan98

Guest
Well, the dreaded is happening.

We have a Breakaway Box up at the transmitter site (mountain top). It's running 24/7 feeding our transmitter. I was hesitant initially to rely on a PC to feed our transmitter...especially knowing it was going to run 24/7/365. Long story short: it crashes about every 3 days. Locks up (sometimes blue screen of death, sometimes just freezes).

Its running a new solid state drive, core 2, windows xp. Everytime it locks up, it's an hour of dead air as I haul up to the mountain to reset.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a reliable pc that could work in an RF environment? I've heard people talk about their breakaway boxes running 24/7 with no problem. Is it time for a 'new' pc; I'd hate to just toss this setup all together.

Thoughts?
 
There must be some application running that is not stable or hogs resources.

Any remote on-line access to the computer can cause a freeze up if the network slows to crawl.

If there were an RF issue I'd expect it would have shown up immediately.

How long has this setup been in operation before this started hppening?

In a couple years of running automation AND Breakaway Broadcast 24/7/365 on used laptops, I've never had a lockup.

If possible try setting internet OFFLINE and turn off updates.

Set up the box to auto-start all needed tasks and see if it still locks up when it's only dealing with audio throughput.

If the same computer is the receiver end of a STL, I don't have any suggestions except to move THAT function
to some other computer and let the offline Breakaway box just do that one job.
 
I have VNC server running on it... which really is not needed I suppose. No internet or anything else.

Simple audio pass through an M-Audio 192 card, into breakaway, and out.

The only application(s) that are running are the M-Audio Control Mixer, Breakaway and VNC Server. I initially thought it might be hardware related from the modded 192 card...but then again, why would it go 2-6 days before locking up if that was the case. I would think it would be immediate?

I'll remove VNC server and see if that helps. Also, I'll disable the Blue Screen of Death and have it automatically restart instead...that will atleast only take us off for a few mins each time.
 
Sounds like a memory leak. As a stop-gap, use a silence sensor to reboot the PC. At the same time, have the silence sensor simultaneously switch to a backup audio source while the main PC is off. When main audio comes back, have the sensor switch over to the main audio source.
 
Back in the days of my webstream I was running a system using Win98SE, but used a program called 98Lite to strip out alot of the fluff of the OS. In fact, I have a streaming computer that hasn't been rebooted in more than a year of continuous operation.

I haven't used it myself, but you might want to look at XPLite which is the same author's program specifically written to strip out the garbage from XP. If it operates anywhere as good as his 98Lite offering it may just help you.

I assume since you mention that it's running on a solid state drive that you did a fresh install and not a ghost or image copy from an already operating installation, right? I also don't know if you need TRIM support for the SSD under XP.
 
Kmagrill said:
Sounds like a memory leak. As a stop-gap, use a silence sensor to reboot the PC. At the same time, have the silence sensor simultaneously switch to a backup audio source while the main PC is off. When main audio comes back, have the sensor switch over to the main audio source.
Click to expand...


How does one fix a memory leak like you mention??...Or can you even?
 
Try a clean install of XP on a reformatted hard drive. If that doesn't work, a new (or different) PC is a good investment.

When the computers work well running Breakaway, they really work well and run a long time before a reboot is needed.
 
duckfan98 said:
Kmagrill said:
Sounds like a memory leak. As a stop-gap, use a silence sensor to reboot the PC. At the same time, have the silence sensor simultaneously switch to a backup audio source while the main PC is off. When main audio comes back, have the sensor switch over to the main audio source.
Click to expand...


How does one fix a memory leak like you mention??...Or can you even?
Click to expand...


There are programs that you can use to track memory usage and ferret out leaks. We used a very nice freeware one, whose name I don't recall, when we were developing Webserver applets to make sure we weren't causing problems when users leave the web applets active 24/7. If you do find one with progressively increasing usage, it's a suspect.
 
Could it be power supply? Are fans working properly? How is your memory? Sometimes local shops can run diagnostics on system and easily locate problem. Could be as simple as memory card going bad or it could be the board. I wouldn't recommend reformat until you've eliminated other possibilities. Reformatting is a nightmare in of itself. I would recommend you call local computer store and tell them you need to get in but you can't wait for system. It's got to be a I'll bring in system and will wait for repair. There are too many things that could be wrong without you going thru the long process of reformatting. You should bring a back up computer to the site and just run something simple like a bunch of songs and your station id on Windows media player while you're waiting for computer to be fixed.
 
Also, have you done some basic troubleshooting, such as looking at Event Viewer on the box to see whether it's showing issues? If not, run through these basic steps first...
 
Just my two cents: mirror the SSD (on a regular drive if you have to) , put it in another PC together with soundcard. You'll know very fast if it is a hardware issue...
Food for thought: there are some SSD's out there with known issues, like the Vertex2's (example)
 
Software issues being triggered by specific hardware also isn't out of the question, so I wouldn't say you would know it's hardware that way, but it would definitely point a finger worth looking at.

Software issues being triggered by software that only runs with that hardware is also possible.
 
An expensive thought, could you run the Breakaway PC at the studio and then rework your STL? IMHO less equipment at a remote site is always better.
 
ChiefOperator said:
Also, have you done some basic troubleshooting, such as looking at Event Viewer on the box to see whether it's showing issues? If not, run through these basic steps first...
Click to expand...

Event Viewer will enlighten you on many things. Check it. Random crashes are usually either PSU or Memory related in my experience.

Definitely remove VNC. Really, I would run Memtest on it, if it all passes, I would put in a new PSU, do a clean install from the ground up with nothing but breakaway and windows...

Then, run MSCONFIG and kill everything not needed for breakaway and reboot.
 
secondchoice said:
An expensive thought, could you run the Breakaway PC at the studio and then rework your STL? IMHO less equipment at a remote site is always better.
Click to expand...
Unless you run Breakaway...
Breakaway definately offers the best results when directly hooked to the x-mitter.
 
I have a small 1 KW am station in South Louisiana running a P3-600 computer with Windows 2K sp4.

It ran for 2 years playing music into the transmitter without a reboot.

I rebooted it and it has been 2 years since and still on the air.

If a lot of horsepower is not necessary and you can find a copy of WIN2k and it will support Breakaway, the simpler operating system is far more reliable.
 
Memory errors are very likely, but what you really need to do is check the error message on the blue screen. It will probably either point you to a driver (I had similar issues with older ESI Juli@ sound card drivers), or to random positions which would point at what in my experience is the most common cause of these issues: Bad memory.

Also, as others have pointed out, check the event viewer. And, if you have memory dumps, there is a tool (I don't remember the name, but Google should help) that analyses those and tries to find a cause.

In general: Blue screens are not caused by normal software bugs. If you get a blue screen, you have either:
- A bug in Windows (not likely)
- A driver issue
- A hardware issue (most likely)

It's typical that you mention that it usually happens after about 3 days. Could it be that there is some scheduled task, such as a virus scanner, that runs at regular intervals? That by itself wouldn't cause blue screens, BUT if the memory usage increases and there's a memory hardware error, at some point you'll hit the block of memory that's causing the issue and you'll get a hangup or blue screen. I've had this in the past where my PC always crashed when I ran FireFox for a while - untill I removed half of the memory, that solved the problem.
 
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