XP heart attack

briggins wrote on 6/5/2003, 10:48 PM
I had a 'mild' panic attack when I got home tonight. First, my configuration:

System: Windows XP Pro (no SP's loaded), 512MB RAM, 1GHz P3, 2 HD's with the second used only for video. The second disk is a 160GB WD. In spite of XP's 139GB limit I managed to get access to almost all of it, I assume from an overlay installed via the WD S/W that came with the drive. One partition is 10GB, the second 139GB.

S/W: MovieStudio (from what I can tell the same thing as VF 2.0c), TMPGEnc full (for MPEG2 render), Frameserver pluginpac from Satish (debugmode.com), and, for what it's worth, the popular 'Marine Aquarium' screensaver.

Last night I kicked off an MPEG2 render of a 13GB AVI that I captured with no problems via MovieStudio. Everything appeared to be working great. The Frameserver was dishing up frames to TMPGEnc and all looked good. TMPGEnc predicted a run time of around 13 hours so I turned off my monitor and called it quits. Tonight when I came home to inspect the results, I almost had a heart attack.

I don't know if it was the Frameserver, MovieStudio, TMPGEnc, my screen saver coming on during the middle of a render, or a combination of all of the above, but my system quit responding. The screensaver appeared to be running fine, but when I tried to exit the processes they wouldn't close. Finally everything stopped responding, so the only thing I could do (other than a powercycle) was a hard reset. After I reset the system, it attempted to reboot and couldn't find either of my hard disks! Hitting F2 on bootup showed both disks as being unrecognized and the 'Boot Sequence' option showed only the floppy drive as being resident. A power cycle solved the problem and a subsequent reboot worked fine, but I can tell you I'm about as nervous as a pregnant nun right now.

After the reboot I inspected the MPEG2 files TMPGEnc was creating and everything seemed to have quit at a little over 13 minutes into the process, although the 13+ minutes of video appeared to be ok. (My screensaver is set to kick in at 10 minutes).

The last time something like this happened (although not nearly this seriously) was when I tried to write an uncompressed AVI file out of ArcSoft Showbiz (68 GB were produced before it quit), and I was forced to reformat my video HD.

Any ideas? I'm really, really nervous about trying this little experiment again. At the risk of stating the obvious, I just backed up all of my data to DVD.

Thanks in advance.

Bruce

Comments

miketree wrote on 6/6/2003, 3:10 AM
G'day Bruce,

My first suggestion is apply the latest service pack.

I have had problems in the past with windows screensavers, esp the 3d winnt4.0 versions. If you insist on having a screen saver - choose something simple.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 6/6/2003, 6:52 AM
I would disable the screen saver and try again. Since it quit at 13 minutes it will be easy to watch it for the first 15 or 20 minutes just to make sure its gets past that point. Rendering is a very CPU intensive process and the very last thing you want running is another CPU intensive process like a 3D screen saver. Disable it. Even if it worked, it will cause the render to take much longer than it should.

~jr
briggins wrote on 6/6/2003, 10:08 AM
Thanks for the tips miketree and JohnnyRoy.

I'll disable the screen saver. I'm reluctant to load SP1 for XP as I have read of real horror stories after people have done that. I'm trying to hold out for SP2.

As an update, I rendered a 13GB DV file to a [duplicate] 13GB DV AVI from Movie Studio then opened TMPGEnc and am encoding to MPEG2 as a separate process, all with the screensaver enabled. TMPGenc was 9 hours into a 12 hour run this morning and my system was fine. Since rendering to DV AVI, even on a 13GB file, takes only a couple of hours, I may forgo using the frameserver and see if I have any further problems.

Bruce
DavidMcKnight wrote on 6/6/2003, 12:17 PM
I've just started experimenting with VF, and like it very much, but I have had lots of experience with Pinnacle Studio 8....funny, it sounds like you're running Studio, with all the lockups and whatnot :)

Anyway, I would turn off the screensaver and any powersaving features that may be running. As you say, turn the monitor off and go to bed, the pc will continue to work.

btw, I have SP-1 loaded, no issues here.
briggins wrote on 6/6/2003, 2:34 PM
Thanks.

I just came back from lunch. Nothing running before I left except Outlook and Windows Explorer. Came back an hour later and the screensaver (and as a result my machine), was frozen solid. I did have the nice little bubbles coming from the audio system so I had that going for me. A power cycle solved the problem.

Needless to say, I have removed the MarineAquarium screensaver from my system.

Bruce