After using WD for almost a year, the software has never run for more than about 3 weeks before crashing. Normally WD reaches 100% CPU use and locks up within 12-36 hours - this is totally unacceptable! I have tried WD on 3 PC’s - one with an Intel processor and 2 with AMD Athlon’s. Same result on every system. I have been running WD on it’s own dedicated PC for about 4 months now with little to no uptime improvement. The only software other than the OS (Windows XP Home SP2) and WD 10.35d on this PC includes:
Weather station: Davis Wireless VP2 connected to PC via USB
OS: Windows XP Home SP2
Processor: AMD Athlon 1.3 GHz
RAM: 768 MB
HD: 30 GB (25 GB free space)
APC 500VA Battery Backup UPS
Comm: ZyXEL 802.11g wireless PCI card linked to Linksys wireless router/cable modem
I would greatly appreciate it if Brian or someone else could provide clear instructions to troubleshoot and solve this long-standing problem. If not, then I respectfully request a refund for WD and WDL so I can move on and try something more reliable.
Mine crashes everyday still but I just learn to live with it :dontknow:
What I notice which is strange about it… like often my animatedcustom.gif would stop being uploaded at e.g, 1am… but everything else like CWOP, the main html data all gets uploaded fine. Then when I return to the comp and view something in WD it waits 5 seconds and then I get the error message/crash thing asking if I want to send data to MS. For me WD hates high CPU/memory usage… thats an autocue for crash!
You’ve picked a tricky time to ask this question. Brian is away from home for a while so won’t be around to look into this.
Some thoughts…
You’re running a VP2 on USB. A number of other people (on this forum and elsewhere) have had problems with that combination. I don’t remember people having crashes though.
Are there any clues in when WD crashes. Is it always at (or near) a specific time of the day? Is it roughly when you run a backup…or when there’s a daily virus scan (using the new or a previous scanner)?
You say that WDL is running on the PC. That sounds like you’re using the PC as a web server. Could that be causing problems?
Are you using any less commonly used features in WD? My own experience is that WD hasn’t crashed my PC for a long long time. The last time was around 12 months ago after a run of over 5 months when the memory leak (seemingly since fixed) problem finally caused my PC to run out of memory. So if you’re getting such regular problems, perhaps you’re using a feature that few others use?
Can you try running without the backup software/UPS software running for a while to see if that improves things? It’s unlikely you’ll get a virus on a PC dedicated to running WD and if you lose power it’s not a lot worse than WD crashing!
Maybe WD with a VP2 and USB is the problem…any solutions?
No clues I know of when WD crashes. Definitely not the same time of day. Has not occurred with a backup run and has not occurred with the daily virus scan. I had no virus scan software for the first 3 months on this PC and it still crashed.
I’m not using the PC as a web server. I installed WDL per standard installation instructions. WD had been crashing for many months prior to my purchase/install of WDL.
I don’t know what features would be considered “less commonly used”. I believe I’m only using the most basic features. Can you cite some less commonly used features so I know what to look for?
I can certainly turn off the backup software, but WD continuously sucked up 100% CPU and crashed routinely long before I started using the backup software. The UPS is brand new as of a week ago. I thought maybe power spikes from the commercial line AC here in Florida could be a problem, so the UPS software shouldn’t be a problem.
I appreciate the reply and I know Brian is away from home now…I can wait to hear from him when he returns. I’ve just finally reached a point of complete frustration. The WD display and capabilities are second-to-none but that’s irrelevant if the software doesn’t work as it is designed.
I know its not much good right now as Brian is away, but have you tried running the debug version? With so many crashes I would have thought that installing this debug and seeing what happens would be the obvious thing to do. I’m not sure any of us would be able to help sort out any info from the debug version but at least you wold have a store of debug data for Brian when he got back to NZ.
I must admit to suffering crashes in the recent past which happened about every 5 days but that seems to be fixed at least for me in the latest versions. Currently I’ve not run without an upgrade for more than about 5 days recently but that is because Brian was fixing some other problems which I have been experiencing. With him away for a couple of weeks now is a chance to see how long it will run for
Based on what I have read here and in other forums this certainly sounds suspiciously like a VP USB issue which has been reported with WD and other software as well such as VWS and for those that the VP/USB issue affects it appears the only resolution is getting the serial logger…
The problem with this type of issue is the only way to confirm is to get the different logger…
One other suggestion may be to setup WD on the machine where your weather station isn’t running in stationless mode and try to configure the remaining functions as closely as possible to your station machine and see if that also has problems…
I am running WD on two machines, one with a VP Pro 2 and a 1-wire network and it routinely runs for weeks, until i either have to upgrade WD or Windows (for security updates), the other just was rebooted after 36 days of continuous use that version is for my web cam…
If it is the USB issue then you would have to either reboot or unplug and plug back in the cable before you could reconnect to the datalogger. If WD crashes, but connects fine after simply re-running it, then it is probably not the USB issue.
I have noticed that sometimes when WD shuts down, it does not completely shut down. The window closes, and it otherwise looks like the program shut down. When you open task manager and look at the processes list however, you will see it still there, and consuming quite a lot of cpu. In almost every case where I’ve seen the CPU stay pegged near 100%, it is because of this lingering WD instance. If you’re running WD and the CPU usage is high, try opening task manager and see if you have two weather display instances in the processes list. If you do, kill the WD process that has the highest CPU usage.
Normally, WD on my system uses under 10% of the CPU except for brief periods of time when it does extra processing. There were some occasional versions in the past where crashing was a problem for me, but lately (the past several months) WD has been pretty stable for me (currently running 10.34t). It’s not a perfect comparison with your setup though, as I ran about 2 months of that time with VPLive connected to the console, and WD getting its live data from the data.csv VPLive creates, and then the past 5 months WD is getting its data through VirtualVP (although to WD this is the same as being connected to the console). About half that time I ran it on a dedicated, fairly low power PC, and the other half (currently) running in a virtual machine (microsoft virtual pc and virtual server 2005 R2) on a higher powered box. I didn’t see a lot of difference between those hardware setups.
I’m wondering if you have tried the 2wd.txt second install with bare essentials?
I believe there is a FAQ on how to accomplish this.
Some possibilities:
a mis-configuration in the WD setup, either a mistake by you ticking something that shouldn’t be ticked, or some kind of corruption in the wdisplay.ini or the wd registration file. The 2wd.txt second install should prove this out.
a problem with the OS install. Would any program running 24/7 suffer the same problem on this computer?
and hardware…some piece installed in your computer that triggers a memory location or process to go ballistic. Is the computer over-heating? Dirty/dusty inside the cover or the heatsink for the processor? Fans working ok? Power supply problems?
Hi
does the size of memory use of weatherd.exe via task manager get worse and worse over time , and then it crashes when no more memory?
if not that, then it could be the USB data logger known hardware problems (other software suffers from that)
i do know that the production of the animated gifs does seem to be produce a memory leak
i am going to split their production out into a separate .exe
i could give you a refund if you like, PM me your purchase info, if via paypal then i could
First of all, I appreciate all of the suggestions…let me address them:
Coyote: As far as rebooting once per day - yes, I tried that and even within the 24 hours between reboots, WD reached 100% CPU and crashed.
broadstairs: I have not tried running the debug version. I’ll try that next. I assumed the debug version will collect a log of failures I can send to Brian when he gets back home?
JaxWeather: I do hate to get the serial logger. It’s a step backwards since USB is the dominant serial connection and some PC’s are now coming without an RS232 serial port. Maybe Davis needs to address it. Maybe I should turn off WD for a while and just let Davis’ WeatherLink run and see if it works with the USB over time?
tinplate: I do not have to reboot if WD crashes. I can rerun WD after the crash and it acquires the data from the logger and continues to run (until the next crash). I’ve looked at Task Manager many times when WD is using 100% CPU - I’ve never seen 2 instances of WD running at the same time. Once I kill the single WD executable using 100%, I can rerun WD without a reboot.
NorCal Dan: I have not tried 2wd.txt - not sure what it is but I’ll look at the FAQ. I suppose a misconfiguration is possible, but how would one ever know? There are so many options it’s mind boggling. I think I have a fairly basic setup. I’ve installed WD on 3 separate computers with (I’m sure) slightly different configurations and have had the same results. Since this is my third PC, the OS install shouldn’t be an issue. I’ve left other apps running 24/7 on other PCs (not this one since I don’t really have any other) and they never crashed. There is no other hardwar on this PC - no printer, no scanner, no camera, etc. I don’t think overheating is a problem. It is clean inside - I blow out any dust, etc. every 3-4 months. The fans are all operating. Shouldn’t be the power supply unless all 3 PC’s I’ve run WD on have bad power supplies - not likely. The other 2 PC’s without WD run fine 24/7.
Brian: Hope you’re finding some storms to chase. I don’t think the size of the memory use get worse over time but I can’t say for sure. From my observations, I think it runs along at under 10% with the occasional spike to just under 50% for a second or less then back to under 10%. On occasion, within less than an hour after a reboot then restart WD will spike and stay at 100% - that’s rather quick. Is there a way I can log the CPU usage instead of manually watching it in Task Manager? I am not creating any animated gifs. I’d rather not get a refund just yet - I think WD is the best weather station display software as far as capability and features as well as the web page displays you can create. I’d rather work on this a while longer and see if this can be solved. What do you suggest I try next? Should I install the debugging software or wait until you are home and have time to address it?
I’ve attached a .doc file with a screen capture of my CPU usage from the last few minutes. Every 60 seconds usage spikes to ~46% for a second (there was one spike to 100%) and then settles back to ~ 8%. Not sure it this will help.
Yes it creates a .elf file on your C drive in the root directory, this is what you send to Brian. Its not 100% at capturing data, but if there is nothing there then it may not be a WD problem as such.
I understand but this IS a Davis issue and they AFAIK know about it. I gather some people have had problems depending on the type of USB port they are using 1 or 2 but not sure which way round. Try searching as there was quite a lot of talk on the forum about it.
This looks quite like my graphs when running WD! Good luck with finding the problem, and do keep all of us informed. You may get the odd suggestion which may just help.
You can install WD to a new directory and in that directory create a 2wd.txt file. This will allow WD to create a second set of ini and reg files so you won’t mess up the original set of files. You then have a bare, new, plain install of WD that you can then configure with the absolute bare minimum of configuration, just enough so that it collects your data and creates a basic webpage. This should show if the problem you are having is associated with the configuration you have set. You could use the debug version of WD for this new install.
I was looking at your Computer information and notice your memory setup . This may sound alittle funny but give it a try pull one of your memory chips and run it on 512K . I wondering if you may have two different speeds of chips
Coyote
I would second this suggestion, start with a fresh barebones install, test that for a while and see if the problem is still there. We have a FAQ with instructions.
I have two Davis/WD stations and they can both run as long as the power company supplies power, which is usually 2-3 months, so WD does work very reliably for me and many other users.
I was having problems with WD ,but this was lack of my knowledge
it was not WD causing it
first of all, I turned off any anti-virus program running
in Microsoft Internet Explorer xp ,I was running Windows defender definitely turn that off
Outlook express can cause a problem, with the latest version I have seen this problem disappear
I don’t know if there is a problem with a small memory leak but since I have reactivated
CachemanXP ,I have had no problems, this may be just a coincidence
I have checked my BIOS I had some settings that were not necessary so I deactivated them
my suggestion would-be start with looking at the BIOS, power management, and so on
it does not matter what program you use for this sort of technology,
you will have to go through the same learning curve
what makes WD the best program for me, is that there is someone always there trying to help with any technical problems even when we say it’s a problem with the program
I know this dosn’t help your paticular problem, but for the record I run WD 24/7 on my partners machine, which she uses for work every single day and night and it never crashes (apart from one time due to a bug that was fixed in a few hours, but that was only crashing WD, not the PC), indeed uptime is measured in months. It is only a P4 2.4 Ghz and she dosn’t even notice WD running. She runs Norton Internet security (Virus Checker / Firewall), Outlook Express, Lotus Organiser, Photoshop, MYOB, IE, Firefox to name but a few off the top of my head. She also plays alot of little Java based games !
If it were me with the this problem on a single PC I would suspect the CPU fan as it appears the the crashing is related to the CPU usage, but if it is happening on 3 seperate machine that would of course rule that out. One would need to find the something that is in common with all 3 PCs. A very unusual problem.
From my experience, any troubleshooting is to no avail. I used the usb data logger for nearly 3 months with constant crashing. I had Davis send me a serial data logger replacement and had no crashes since. That was 6 months ago. Without a doubt, I would recommend the same for you. I’m surprised you put up with it that long.
I know it sounds stupid, but if you can get a serial data logger, you can connect it to your PC using a serial to USB converter. That’s how mine is set up and it’s not been a problem. The problem seems to be with the Davis USB implementation (on some PCs).
It might be worth checking out some of the threads about the USB data logger problem to see if you can find any clues there.
