"music scan terminated unexpectedly" SqueezeCenter 7.4.1 and 7.4.2

[richidoo]

You could try it in safe mode, to eliminate memory and program conflict issues. 1GB was enough in 7.3...

Definitely report what you've found. It strongly implies something in their code.

[Bob in St. Louis]

In 52 minutes it already made it to 46,000 songs. 
Something is DEFINITELY faster.

I've got the task manager running in the background on the performance screen. When (if) it terminates, I'll be waiting to do a screen shot. Maybe there will be something in there that will give a hint if RAM is the cause.

more soon,
Bob

[Bob in St. Louis]

Nope.....   That wasn't it.  
I barely know what I'm doing fiddling around with virtual memory. However, I did enlarge it from 1536 ("initial size") to 2000.

Here are two screen shots.
#1 is during the scan.
#2 is a few seconds after the scan terminated. (Ignore the double humps in the chart in number two. That's when I checked my email.  )
I noticed the scan stopped at 58,849....Slightly short of the 58,869. I assume it's due to having more stuff going on in the background, like the screen print software?

Notice the huge hump on the right side of #2?
That's where it "choked". Is that due to memory?



======================================================

[Bob in St. Louis]

....but then I go to my SC user interface and it says I've got 58,949 songs. one hundred more than it claims to have scanned.
That's just weird.

Bob

[Bob in St. Louis]

You could try it in safe mode, to eliminate memory and program conflict issues. 1GB was enough in 7.3...

By the way, I didn't mean to ignore you Rich. I'm not sure I know how to start in safe mode and then open a piece of software. I did that once a decade ago, but have not needed to use the "safe" thing since.
Sorry man. You're dealing with an idiot when it comes to certain aspects of Windows.

Bob

[mdconnelly]

I'd try adding more music incrementally at this point to see if you can.  I'm not sure if Squeezebox Server will let you since the last scan failed but worth a try.

You can boot into safe mode via the setup function on reboot (one of the function keys usually gets you there - can't remember which).   

[Bob in St. Louis]

I'd try adding more music incrementally at this point to see if you can. 

Yip. I'm going to "clear library and rescan". I'll only do one folder at a time. Given there are eleven separate folders, that'll take a while. It will answer whether or not it's a memory issue.

But I really need to finish installing the wood floors for the wife, least I earn myself a divorce for the new year. 

more later,
bob

[richidoo]

You have enough memory.

To get into safe mode, Reboot the PC. When the POST (BIOS startup test) is almost finished start hitting F8 key twice per second. If you see the windows graphic then you missed it, so reboot and try again. This will give you a boot menu which will let you choose "Safe mode with networking."  You may need to start slimserver service manually because safe mode is not supposed to start anything it doesn't absolutely need.

And, don't forget version 7.3 is there waiting for ya!

[Bob in St. Louis]

You have enough memory.

Ya know....I think you might be right. But when you say I've got "enough", is that enough of the physical memory, the virtual memory, or both?
I did scans of smaller folders, one at a time, with a reboot of the PC in between each scan.  I just got the 'terminated' failure again. Strangely enough, it occurred in the "M"s in that same folder as before. This time it failed at:
Directory Scan   (50293  of  76276)   Complete  00:49:25
Not even close to the 58,849. Ignore the 76276, since I'm adding small folders individually.

Not sure how much of this is valuable to the bug thread at Slimdevices, but I think I'll post a link to this thread and let them decide. The 7.3.x is looking better all the time.

For now, I'll try the safe mode and do a complete rescan of the entire drive.

Bob

[Bob in St. Louis]

"Screen Print" doesn't work in safe mode, but the scan terminated at:
Directory Scan   (58856  of  101972)   Complete  00:57:19

It's taking less than half the time as it did before I played with the memory, but it's still terminating at about the same place. 

Bob

[richidoo]

Nogo on the safemode, I didn't think there would but it eliminates memory and other programs being an issue. You've done everything you can while still maintaining your sanity. At least you can downgrade until coast is clear.

By saying, "You have enough memory," I meant that 1GB RM should be enough memory to prevent slim from crashing with no other heavy programs running. Your performance meter seems to agree. You were pushin it, but no major stress.

Virtual memory is OS simulated RAM running on the hard drive. Looks like RAM to the program, runs 100 times slower than physical RAM but it prevents crashes from running out of memory. Set it to allow Windows to manage virtual memory automatically. Then it will use as little as possible, but can increase instantly if needed. It should take a couple GB or so if you have it to spare.

My kids use an XP SP3 machine with 1.5GB, memory is maxed out. It is a little slow to fully boot, but once it's up and running it's fast enough for the kids playing online VR action games like Roblox and Wizard101. You can check how much physical RAM you have in system properties, then look it up on 4allmemory.com to see if it's worth maxing it out.  Some commodity memory is really cheap now. I still have a 500MB DIMM lying around unused. It's yours if you want it, goes in Dell Dimension 2400, probably pretty standard DIMM, you can look it up on 4allmemory to know for sure.  Win + Break brings up system properties, or right click My Computer icon for properties command.

[Bob in St. Louis]

Cool, thanks for all the help Rich, Mike, and Bryan.

So it's not a memory/hardware issue, nor is it an antivirus/firewall, issue. Doesn't seem to be anything on my end from the looks of it.
That leaves a Logitech based solution. Right?

I've been thinking about "uping" the amount of RAM recently. That, combined with the spare PC I've got and a fresh install of a new OS (Windows '7') will fix all my woes.
A boy can only hope.

For now it looks like the only solution is to downgrade to 7.3.
Once I can scan my tunes again, then I can address my issue with the Duet error "Can't connect to library".
 

Done for the weekend.
Thanks all,
Bob

[mdconnelly]

Having at least 2G of memory for Windows is definitely a good idea, but I somehow doubt that has anything to do with the problem you're having.   As Rich said, I'd go back to the latest v7.3 release and see if that works now.   If you're still having the problem, then maybe there's something flakey with your PC, but if 7.3 works, then I think it's gotta be something with the 7.4 series of Squeezebox Server.  Let them deal with it (but don't hesitate to ping them occasionally if you don't get any response).

Good luck, Bob!

[Carlman]

So, that's like 8,500 albums.. wow.  It would take you a year of 24/7 playing to hear it all.  That is an impressive number of albums.  How much of it do you actually listen to?  Do you really like that much music?  I mean this as a nice question because I'm genuinely blown away at the volume(s) of music.  

Stats from my setup:
My paultry 846 albums with 11091 songs by 402 artists takes about 5 minutes to completely scan and another 4 to get all the artwork for the albums.  I have a 2G processor w/ 2G of RAM.  During the scan it uses up to 50% CPU and a half Gig of ram.

[Bob in St. Louis]

SUCCESS

Per the recommendation, I reverted back to 7.3.?
Works like a charm, I've got all my tunes now. 
That works out great since the fellas at the Slim bug fix-it center have told me to contact the support department. 
Apparenty they've determined it's not worthy of "bug status".

Carl, the tunes are for myself and my wife. We have wildly different tastes which tends to fill a collection rather quickly. I like everything but country and she hates everything but country. To give you an example, I spent most of yesterday upstairs installing wood floors. WHile doing that I had her PC (using MediaMonkey) play songs at random from the Blues genre. Most of the time that's the way I'll listen, just pick a genre and "let 'er roll" all day.
 So yea, I really do like that much. 

Bob