program locking up

[slsides]

Hi, this is my first post in the MTU forums.

one of my clients is a kj who uses hoster for his karaoke shows. his hardware was getting a bit old and dodgy, so he hired me to build him a new system. his requirements were:

• keep the system footprint as small as possible
• no internal optical drives
• ati radeon 7000 display adapter
• hoster runs from external USB hard drive where kma files are also stored
• windows xp

so i used a microATX form factor case and motherboard with via chipset, AMD sempron LE1100 cpu, 512mb of samsung ddr2 ram, a sapphire ati radeon 7000 video card and a small internal hdd with windows xp pro. the system's only use is to run karaoke shows, and these specs seem more than adequate, as well as making it very affordable.

he still had his second installation of hoster, which i used to install it on an external 500gb hdd connected to the completed pc. hoster version 2.2.1.9 is what he has, and he said he actually likes the older version better than the newer ones.

i thought we got all the kinks worked out, but last night he reported to me that hoster was locking up during his show. from what i can tell, if he does anything in hoster while a song is playing (specifically, searching for a song to make ready for the next singer), hoster will lock up at the end of the currently playing track. i know that when this happens, he has to restart hoster, and some of the times a complete reboot has been required. the only thing i know of that is different between the setup he was using last night and what he and i used to test with were the mouse and keyboard. my spares are ps/2, just old ones i keep to use when working on other peoples' computers. the ones i got him to go with the computer are usb models.

i need to help my client get this problem resolved, so any help will be most appreciated.

thanks,

shaun

[gduns - with the Lord]

i used to install it on an external 500gb hdd

Hoster must be installed to the C: Drive. also the version of hoster you are installing is very old. He should consider an upgrade.

[ddouglass]

Couple of things to add to what GDuns said.
One is 512 MB memory is adequate but barely. I would consider kicking that up to 1 GB.
Two if you haven't I would look at the Custom updates from Microsoft and do any that pertain to hardware. Also if he is going to upgrade (highly recommended) then you will need to load .Net Framework 1.0 and 2.0 to be able to install.
Most likely your glitches are being cause by the program running from the external USB drive. Response from a USB port as opposed to an internal IDE or SATA port is greatly reduced.

[admin]

Originally Posted by ddouglass

One is 512 MB memory is adequate but barely. I would consider kicking that up to 1 GB.
Two if you haven't I would look at the Custom updates from Microsoft and do any that pertain to hardware. Also if he is going to upgrade (highly recommended) then you will need to load .Net Framework 1.0 and 2.0 to be able to install.
Most likely your glitches are being cause by the program running from the external USB drive. Response from a USB port as opposed to an internal IDE or SATA port is greatly reduced.

Basically I agree with Dale, but here are our recommendations.

1. With all the features we now have, 1GB RAM is requiured.

2. Hoster must be on the C: drive. What he wants is not possible. PERIOD!

3. MTU recommends doing ALL Custom Windows Updates. Dale may be right, but if anything is not working right, do ALL upgrades.

Hoster 2.219 is no longer supported. It will not work with currently available CD/DVD drives at all. Very old drives are no longer recommended, so you have a Catch-22 to worry with. Use Hoster 3.321, which will release today.

[slsides]

Originally Posted by admin

Basically I agree with Dale, but here are our recommendations.

1. With all the features we now have, 1GB RAM is requiured.

2. Hoster must be on the C: drive. What he wants is not possible. PERIOD!

3. MTU recommends doing ALL Custom Windows Updates. Dale may be right, but if anything is not working right, do ALL upgrades.

Hoster 2.219 is no longer supported. It will not work with currently available CD/DVD drives at all. Very old drives are no longer recommended, so you have a Catch-22 to worry with. Use Hoster 3.321, which will release today.

Thanks for the response. I'm great with computers, but have no experience with Hoster, so the help is very much appreciated.

My client has opted, at least for the time being, to stick with the version of Hoster that he's been using. It works for him. Any computers I do for other clients who happen to be karaoke DJs will get whatever is the newest version, and I'll strongly recommend that those customers opt for WinXP over Vista.

My main solution to the problems was to uninstall Hoster and re-install it on drive C:. Strictly from a throughput standpoint, I'm honestly not sure why this should make a difference. Once loaded, the executable should reside in RAM and swap/virtual memory, and is much smaller in size than any of the KMA files that will routinely be ferried back and forth across the USB bus, but if it will solve the locking up, I'm game. After the change, we tested the machine in every way we could think to, and all appears to be well. I'll be hoping for the best.

The quantity of RAM, 512mb, is the amount that the client has been using to run his shows for over 4 years, so for the version of Hoster he's using, I feel confident that it's sufficient. I'll definitely adhere to the advised 1gb (or more likely ensure success with 2gb) for builds that include more modern versions of Hoster.

I should find out Thursday night or Friday morning how everything is going.

thanks,

Shaun

[admin]

Originally Posted by slsides

I should find out Thursday night or Friday morning how everything is going.

Shaun, how did things go for your client?

Just wondering, what Hoster version is he/she running?

We expect to release 3.321 today with all sorts of fixes for Vista. If this fails, I think we'll abandon Vista support.

An HP employee told one our Beta Testers that HP considers Vista to be 2 years away from being usable by the Public. He said they are allowing buyers to change to XP and replace Vista. That says it all from MTU's point of view.

[slsides]

well, thought i'd post an update to let folks know what's happening with my situation.

based on the advice i received here, i put the new version of hoster (3.3.2.1) on the computer, and i added ram to comply with the recommendation of 1gb.

my client set the new computer up on thursday night for the big test. the equipment was solid as a rock. you can't imagine how relieved i was.

the only comment i got from the client was that the play and stop buttons are reversed from the positions they occupied in the version of hoster he's been accustomed to. because he used that version for so long, he's used to clicking play and then starting to adjust the sound levels without even looking at the computer screen. so he found himself clicking the stop button a lot of times and then realizing a couple of seconds later that no music was starting. so other than wondering why the buttons locations were switched, i'm feeling pretty good right now.