by terryo » Thu Apr 12, 2018 4:19 pm
I've been doing a live radio show using MMW for many years and never had a problem. What happened today still baffles me.
I have two identical HP EliteBook 8570p laptops with Windows 7 Pro. Neither laptop has ever connected to the internet. All music files and upgrades come from the 2 GB external HDs (WD Elements) connected to each. The hard drives are synchronized weekly with my master MMW library (on a Win 10 PC). The laptops are 'Add/Rescan' to these drives every Weds night. Everything is identical.
Both laptops use MMW 4.1.15.something. My main PC uses 4.1.20.1864. I haven't upgraded the laptops past 4.1.15 because one upgrade on the PC scrambled all my column arrangements in my playlists and erased the custom titles for the Custom 1, Custom 2, etc fields and I didn't want to lose my carefully laid out arrangements on the laptops.
Twenty minutes into my show MMW froze on the #2 laptop. I had a CD in ripping and the screen showed "Reading Files: Now Playing" even though the Now Playing screen had never been opened (this occurs fairly regularly but usually just slows the PC and/or laptops to a crawl for a minute or less).
After 3-4 minutes of waiting, I used Task Manager to close MMW. Upon reopening, MMW would display various playlists and seemed operational but no tracks would play. Then it froze again.
This time, I forced MMW to close, logged out, logged in and reopened MMW. MMW seemed to work but again nothing would play.
So I forced MMW to close, and shut Windows down. After waiting a couple minutes, I rebooted and reopened MMW. It came up with some sort of white text on black display, perhaps a skin, which would be really weird because I disabled skinning when I installed it. I was totally freaked. I was live on the radio and my right laptop is crippled.
I dug out some CDs and started cobbling together a show between the one functional MMW and the dozen or so emergency CDs I carry with me. Once my radio show was flowing smoothly again, I went back to the afflicted computer and found the music and playlists were there and playable but the displayed columns and collections were changed and the four custom ID3 fields lost their labels and reverted to Custom 1, Custom 2... I gradually started using it on the air. Except for the bizarre interface changes, it seemed to work fine.
How is what happened possible? I took a screen shot with my phone of the black interface. Perhaps it is a skin but I wouldn't know because I've never done anything with skins.
This really shook me because for many years MMW has been reliable when I am live on the radio. I've come to depend heavily on it. It enables me to program in so many creative ways that would not be possible without it. This is the first failure and I'm lost. Where do I start? I don't even know how to determine if this is a skin.
The other laptop is identical in every way. Is it a bomb waiting to follow suit?
I've been doing a live radio show using MMW for many years and never had a problem. What happened today still baffles me.
I have two identical HP EliteBook 8570p laptops with Windows 7 Pro. Neither laptop has ever connected to the internet. All music files and upgrades come from the 2 GB external HDs (WD Elements) connected to each. The hard drives are synchronized weekly with my master MMW library (on a Win 10 PC). The laptops are 'Add/Rescan' to these drives every Weds night. Everything is identical.
Both laptops use MMW 4.1.15.something. My main PC uses 4.1.20.1864. I haven't upgraded the laptops past 4.1.15 because one upgrade on the PC scrambled all my column arrangements in my playlists and erased the custom titles for the Custom 1, Custom 2, etc fields and I didn't want to lose my carefully laid out arrangements on the laptops.
Twenty minutes into my show MMW froze on the #2 laptop. I had a CD in ripping and the screen showed "Reading Files: Now Playing" even though the Now Playing screen had never been opened (this occurs fairly regularly but usually just slows the PC and/or laptops to a crawl for a minute or less).
After 3-4 minutes of waiting, I used Task Manager to close MMW. Upon reopening, MMW would display various playlists and seemed operational but no tracks would play. Then it froze again.
This time, I forced MMW to close, logged out, logged in and reopened MMW. MMW seemed to work but again nothing would play.
So I forced MMW to close, and shut Windows down. After waiting a couple minutes, I rebooted and reopened MMW. It came up with some sort of white text on black display, perhaps a skin, which would be really weird because I disabled skinning when I installed it. I was totally freaked. I was live on the radio and my right laptop is crippled.
I dug out some CDs and started cobbling together a show between the one functional MMW and the dozen or so emergency CDs I carry with me. Once my radio show was flowing smoothly again, I went back to the afflicted computer and found the music and playlists were there and playable but the displayed columns and collections were changed and the four custom ID3 fields lost their labels and reverted to Custom 1, Custom 2... I gradually started using it on the air. Except for the bizarre interface changes, it seemed to work fine.
How is what happened possible? I took a screen shot with my phone of the black interface. Perhaps it is a skin but I wouldn't know because I've never done anything with skins.
This really shook me because for many years MMW has been reliable when I am live on the radio. I've come to depend heavily on it. It enables me to program in so many creative ways that would not be possible without it. This is the first failure and I'm lost. Where do I start? I don't even know how to determine if this is a skin.
The other laptop is identical in every way. Is it a bomb waiting to follow suit?