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Matthew1471's ASP
I am in the "build-phase" and "testing" of the new release of BlogX. I haven't forgotten 
11:24 AM
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Monday, 17 Nov 2008
Monday, 27 Oct 2008
Windows Server 2003 started to blue screen once a week ever since I started playing around with MediaPortal and DVB. I have since abandoned TVServer and DVB in the attempt to confirm my suspicions.
As the server needs to recover from blue screens rapidly (I often manage it remotely) the computer creates a minidump file and reboots. Problem is this often obstructs valuable diagnostic information as to what files/devices are causing the blue screen. I've since looked this up (here was the best resource) and found out the Windows Debugging Tools usually used only by driver developers will read a minidump and offer simple analysis. Windows Debugging Tools decided the fault was "probably caused by" Ks.sys.
A google later returns A Crash Occurs in Ks.sys on Computers with Intel Hyper-Threading CPU the computer in question is indeed a Intel Hyper-Threading CPU based machine. Windows Server 2003 runs largely on XP code and MediaPortal is unsupported on Windows Server 2003 due to missing "hotfixes which are essential for using TV-Cards with TV-Server and MediaPortal". Interestingly the knowledge base article does mention "The routine does not undo the preparation for the request. That causes resources to leak." which does sound remarkably familiar to those who read my amusement of the culprit finding Event Log reporting system degregation (http://blogx.co.uk/ViewItem.asp?Entry=765)
The only loose end is that I was using a FreeCom DVB device and not a Hauppage device as listed in the KB article, but given the system files mentioned are part of Windows it wouldn't surprise me to learn that other devices exhibit the same problems for the same reasons.
I have now since suspended all DVB decoding on the server until I can be sure I have successfully isolated the fault (which may take 15 days of unquestionable reliability) and then I will experiment with using the XP patches.
As the server needs to recover from blue screens rapidly (I often manage it remotely) the computer creates a minidump file and reboots. Problem is this often obstructs valuable diagnostic information as to what files/devices are causing the blue screen. I've since looked this up (here was the best resource) and found out the Windows Debugging Tools usually used only by driver developers will read a minidump and offer simple analysis. Windows Debugging Tools decided the fault was "probably caused by" Ks.sys.
A google later returns A Crash Occurs in Ks.sys on Computers with Intel Hyper-Threading CPU the computer in question is indeed a Intel Hyper-Threading CPU based machine. Windows Server 2003 runs largely on XP code and MediaPortal is unsupported on Windows Server 2003 due to missing "hotfixes which are essential for using TV-Cards with TV-Server and MediaPortal". Interestingly the knowledge base article does mention "The routine does not undo the preparation for the request. That causes resources to leak." which does sound remarkably familiar to those who read my amusement of the culprit finding Event Log reporting system degregation (http://blogx.co.uk/ViewItem.asp?Entry=765)
The only loose end is that I was using a FreeCom DVB device and not a Hauppage device as listed in the KB article, but given the system files mentioned are part of Windows it wouldn't surprise me to learn that other devices exhibit the same problems for the same reasons.
I have now since suspended all DVB decoding on the server until I can be sure I have successfully isolated the fault (which may take 15 days of unquestionable reliability) and then I will experiment with using the XP patches.
2:09 PM
| Comments [1] | #Computing
Monday, 20 Oct 2008
I have recently started playing with MediaPortal as a free replacement to the feature poor (though admittedly reliable) Windows Media Center on my Vista PC.
The software is definitely impressive. It is fast at many of the activities that other software fails with. However, first thing I noticed was that loading and seeking through a large collection of music (~20000 tracks / ~30GB+) was exceptionally slow. I approached the developers about this issue and found I was actually tackling the issue the wrong way.
Turning off in the configuration program "Auto-update DB on changes in share", "Create folder cache on demand" and "Use ID3 tags / autoadd file to music database" had no effect, nor did adding them to the database.
The solution was to in the actual client itself (not the configuration program) set your view to anything other than "Shares". "Shares" is updated real time and recurses the directory structure. Whereas all the other views are generated from information contained in the database.
Thanks to "seco-" on #mediaportal for his help who admitted it is not as intuitive as the rest of the program usually is:
[10:48] <seco-> I think there should be some kind of HOWTO for large collections of music/movies in wiki
[10:49] <seco-> that's so common problem
[10:49] <seco-> and the MP way of solving it is not very simple and straightforward
Hopefully this will benefit other music fans too.
Keywords: mediaportal, media portal, media portal, slow, performance, large collection of music, slow loading MP3s.
The software is definitely impressive. It is fast at many of the activities that other software fails with. However, first thing I noticed was that loading and seeking through a large collection of music (~20000 tracks / ~30GB+) was exceptionally slow. I approached the developers about this issue and found I was actually tackling the issue the wrong way.
Turning off in the configuration program "Auto-update DB on changes in share", "Create folder cache on demand" and "Use ID3 tags / autoadd file to music database" had no effect, nor did adding them to the database.
The solution was to in the actual client itself (not the configuration program) set your view to anything other than "Shares". "Shares" is updated real time and recurses the directory structure. Whereas all the other views are generated from information contained in the database.
Thanks to "seco-" on #mediaportal for his help who admitted it is not as intuitive as the rest of the program usually is:
[10:48] <seco-> I think there should be some kind of HOWTO for large collections of music/movies in wiki
[10:49] <seco-> that's so common problem
[10:49] <seco-> and the MP way of solving it is not very simple and straightforward
Hopefully this will benefit other music fans too.
Keywords: mediaportal, media portal, media portal, slow, performance, large collection of music, slow loading MP3s.
4:34 PM
| Comments [0] | #Computing
A few days ago there was an update to Norton Ghost 14 (14.0), version 14.0.3.28361 (which LiveUpdate referred to as "SP3"). Network backups on another machine still work. I took my external hard disk drive to my Vista laptop to catch up on 25 days of missed backups and received the following error:
The error was spurious. I then received another spurious message:
A google later led to a generic solution for this problem of a missing service : http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/powerquest.nsf/0/7154f08552eef46265257401006f6a55?OpenDocument but I worked out what has happened.
SP3 has installed the "Symantec SymSnap VSS Provider" service (Descripton:"Symantec SymSnap VSS Provider") and removed the "SymSnapService" service (Description: "Symantec Volume Snapshot Service"). The registry file above will re-add it.
Presumably Symantec wanted to make their service names more coherent but forgot to update the backup engine to stop looking for the old service.
This error message thus occurs as it cannot find the old service which manages the snapshots. I am not as of writing sure if this is a Vista only glitch. I am hoping it is. If not, I would be very disappointed to learn a bug such as this was not caught during testing.
Error EC8F17B7: Cannot create recovery points for job: Drive Backup of ACER (C:\). Error E0BB001B: Cannot lock volume \\?\Volume{42eae0d2-6cac-11dc-8e19-806e6f6e6963}\ because it contains the OS or has an active paging file.
Details: The volume contains system or paging files.
Source: Norton Ghost
Details: The volume contains system or paging files.
Source: Norton Ghost
The error was spurious. I then received another spurious message:
"This operation cannot be performed while Windows is running. You must complete this operation inside the recovery environment"
A google later led to a generic solution for this problem of a missing service : http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/powerquest.nsf/0/7154f08552eef46265257401006f6a55?OpenDocument but I worked out what has happened.
SP3 has installed the "Symantec SymSnap VSS Provider" service (Descripton:"Symantec SymSnap VSS Provider") and removed the "SymSnapService" service (Description: "Symantec Volume Snapshot Service"). The registry file above will re-add it.
Presumably Symantec wanted to make their service names more coherent but forgot to update the backup engine to stop looking for the old service.
This error message thus occurs as it cannot find the old service which manages the snapshots. I am not as of writing sure if this is a Vista only glitch. I am hoping it is. If not, I would be very disappointed to learn a bug such as this was not caught during testing.
0:04 AM
| Comments [2] | #Computing
Wednesday, 15 Oct 2008
There's a few interesting things to be learnt from the recent BCS debate.
Computer science students have dropped 50%. Cap Gemini have experienced so many problems trying to find IT graduates they now are trying to find IT skills in other degree disciplines:
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.22222s
Many do not know why they are implementing some of the technologies, they have a strong lack of "business sense" or even basic "business awareness". Our computer science students need to have had relationships with businesses while at University:
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.22227
There are 2 main "take home messages". The first, we need to start thinking about how we are going to source our future IT graduates (I recently partook in a government supported BCS survey on this matter). The second, IT graduates need to understand why technologies matter to "the unwashed masses" and they need to be prepared to explain it in layman terms. It is a clear message to us all: students, policy makers and academics.
More videos from the 9 video debate available on the linked pages.
Computer science students have dropped 50%. Cap Gemini have experienced so many problems trying to find IT graduates they now are trying to find IT skills in other degree disciplines:
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.22222s
Many do not know why they are implementing some of the technologies, they have a strong lack of "business sense" or even basic "business awareness". Our computer science students need to have had relationships with businesses while at University:
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.22227
There are 2 main "take home messages". The first, we need to start thinking about how we are going to source our future IT graduates (I recently partook in a government supported BCS survey on this matter). The second, IT graduates need to understand why technologies matter to "the unwashed masses" and they need to be prepared to explain it in layman terms. It is a clear message to us all: students, policy makers and academics.
More videos from the 9 video debate available on the linked pages.
