Not using Standby question

[scottw]

Anyone here leave there XL machine running 24x7??

I have been putting mine in standby but due to a CPU usage problem I have been having bringing it out of standby, and cannot get rid or, I am debating on just leaving it running all the time.
Besides the electricity bill, what other problems am I looking at??

I am most concerned with loosing a hard drive due to wear and having something happen to my touchscreen due to it being on all the time.

I will probably use the "turn off monitor after XX" but will the "turn off hard disk after xx" help?? I have heard different stories about some people who turn off their computers each night to reduce wear but others say turning it on and off is worse. Now I know standby and a cold boot is totally different but just wanted other opinions. Would I be causing more problems by using the "turn off hard disk after xx", or should I just leave them running 24x7.

Just looking for some opinions, thanks.

[vaporhat]

I leave my HTPC on 24x7. I have not reached the point with XL where I use it as my 100% frontend. Not yet at least.

The main reason I leave my PC on all the time because I run my push email server on in. I have wired an on/off switch on my touch screens to minimize the use. Eventually I use the time-out feature once I am using XL 100%.
Yes, HDD life will be reduced. I believe that it's worse to leave it on. I don't believe most HDD fail because of thermal fatigue (like a projector bulb) but rather because of bearing failure or other low cycle fatigued parts. Temperature signifigantly increases the damage of those cycles (a cycle being a revolution). Just my theory...

The way I look at it.. if you have decent cooling you should be OK. Depending how many years of use you are looking to get out of every drive?? If I get 3 years of use I think I got my $$ worth. I have lost many drives in the past but have lost very little data along the way.
I have tried RAID array's although currently I have simple partitions set-up. I had too many HDD in my box and not enough cooling. ihave one of those "cool" looking cases that trade sound with cooling effectiveness. I soon hope to move to a 1 or 2 TB NAS configuration in the next year.

At that point I might reconsider the status of my power status. Until then... I am ON.

[scottw]

Cool thanks,

Right now I am using 2 250gb drives with data on both, but space left. I think I am going to buy 2 500gb drives, pretty cheap now, and do a simple mirroring so I can loose one and not loose my data.

I can just push the power button on my touchscreen but before I had a button that would turn off my amp and put my machine in standby which would turn the monitor off, although not turn it off thru the power button. Then to wake it up all I had to do was tap the screen, just like moving the mouse, and it would come on.

Leaving it on may work out better for me especially if I have the monitor turn off after a certain time period of time, and then tapping the monitor will turn it on.

[Marbles_00]

Curious as I looked over you other thread Scott. You mention using the Nov.06 xlobby build. Did you ever move up to the Feb. 07 build? Same problems? I take it you did, but figured I'd ask anyways.

[scottw]

Marbles,

Thanks for looking at the other thread for me. Yeah I did upgrade to the latest free copy about a month ago. I was doing all the fixes in steps to try to narrow down what the problem was and the updated XL did the same thing.
I thought is was a plugin but I am running almost the same plugins as you and you put yours to sleep without issues. It was only doing it about once a week but lately I have been seeing it sometimes everyday but that is because it is brought in and out of standby alot more, my 6 year old knows how to use it now and loves "to put a song on". Thank goodness for multizone with multiple sources, I can only listen to High School Musical so much

[lar282]

not really what u asked, but does your prob happen without ANY plugins at all.Ususally with XL its a plugin that causes the problem!

I have been running my XL 24/7 for a few years and stopped! a couple a months ago.Reason, I bought another htpc and didn't want 2 pc's on all the time. I bought a cheap nslu2 and hooked up 2 500Gb disk to it and have the media there insted. Now I use standby on both the htpc's. The first one wakes up now and then when it wants to record stuff and it works really well now.


The 100%cpu can't be that hard to figure out. point me to your other post and I'll help u if u want.

//Lasse

[scottw]

not really what u asked, but does your prob happen without ANY plugins at all.Ususally with XL its a plugin that causes the problem!

I have been running my XL 24/7 for a few years and stopped! a couple a months ago.Reason, I bought another htpc and didn't want 2 pc's on all the time. I bought a cheap nslu2 and hooked up 2 500Gb disk to it and have the media there insted. Now I use standby on both the htpc's. The first one wakes up now and then when it wants to record stuff and it works really well now.


The 100%cpu can't be that hard to figure out. point me to your other post and I'll help u if u want.

//Lasse

Thanks,
My post starts at #3 of this thread: http://xlobby.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6039

[Marbles_00]

Holy crap....my 5 year old can't get enough of HSM (especially number 2) . You know you have issues when during the course of the day, you start humming some of those songs... . Come to think about it, you know you have issues when you start abbriviating . Golly, did you notice, on CNN, Sharpay talks about getting her nose done....umm....I didn't just type that did I?

On a side note, how much memory are you using? As I stated, I had problems (though rare) when I only had one stick of 512 installed. Now I have 1.5Gig and it has been running great. In and out of sleep every couple of days (knock on wood).

I also had a problem, way back when, that my system was crashing. What started out as every couple of days, turned into once or twice an evening. I did some major Google searches and concluded it was my memory timing. Went in the BIOS and reconfigured everything to factory defaults...voila, no problems there. May not be totally your situation, but memory sure does do some strange things.

Another example of memory issues...in my most recent MediaPVR project, I had the MB sitting with the memory installed for over a year. I had used the board in the past with the memory and knew it all worked right. When setting up for this recent project, I had issues getting past the BIOS POST. I would only get a constant beep...and no video at all. Thinking video card, or AGP port, or even MB, I didn't think about memory issues until doing a google search. I ended up reseating all the memory modules, and everythings been great since.

Just some thoughts...trying desperately to keep HSM music from entering my brian.

[scottw]

Holy crap....my 5 year old can't get enough of HSM (especially number 2) . You know you have issues when during the course of the day, you start humming some of those songs... . Come to think about it, you know you have issues when you start abbriviating . Golly, did you notice, on CNN, Sharpay talks about getting her nose done....umm....I didn't just type that did I?

too funny

I can't remember off the top of my head how much memory I have but will check when I get home.

Just curious as to how the timing of the memory was changed from factory default's originally, is that something you changed or does it change automatically.

I will check all of this once I get home.

Thanks!!!

[Marbles_00]

Marbles_00 wrote:
Holy crap....my 5 year old can't get enough of HSM (especially number 2) . You know you have issues when during the course of the day, you start humming some of those songs... . Come to think about it, you know you have issues when you start abbriviating . Golly, did you notice, on CNN, Sharpay talks about getting her nose done....umm....I didn't just type that did I?


too funny

Gees, She'll be like: "Daddy, can I listen to High School Music 2, then 1...actually I want these songs from High School Musical 2, followed by this song from High School Music 1, then this song...."
Me: " okay...okay...ok...ohh...DAMN kid, create you own Damn playlist....just finish off with a dose of Iron Maiden...or AC/DC...or just some Tchaikovsky just to let me know I'm still sane!"

[scottw]

Gees, She'll be like: "Daddy, can I listen to High School Music 2, then 1...actually I want these songs from High School Musical 2, followed by this song from High School Music 1, then this song...."
Me: " okay...okay...ok...ohh...DAMN kid, create you own Damn playlist....just finish off with a dose of Iron Maiden...or AC/DC...or just some Tchaikovsky just to let me know I'm still sane!"

Fortunately for me she knows how to start the songs by herself.

I checked and I have 1gb of memory and about half of it is always being used. Also with Xlobby running normally my cpu is normally running at 2-10%.
I think I am going to buy 2 1gb memory sticks, maybe that will help.

So here is what I did. I ran the original installer from Sharp's page and then applied the Feb/March (last freeware) update. I then copied my skin and other stuff over to the new install directory. I removed all plugins that I did not use all the time, the only ones I left were XscriptNG, Xshoutcast, and Xpert.

I still have the problem!!!!

I just removed all plugins except XscriptNG since I use this one constantly and my skin depends on it. I think if I still have this problem I may get rid of standby all together.

Will keep you posted.

[tswhite70]

Scott - XP SP1 or SP2? I didn't read all the old messages but if you haven't tried it yet I think its time to reinstall the OS. It's not Xlobby, too many of us are using that free version for it to be the culprit. Maybe you have a bad driver or another piece of software that conflicts with XL in some way. Put on a clean build and see if you still have the problem...

good luck,
tsw

[scottw]

Scott - XP SP1 or SP2? I didn't read all the old messages but if you haven't tried it yet I think its time to reinstall the OS. It's not Xlobby, too many of us are using that free version for it to be the culprit. Maybe you have a bad driver or another piece of software that conflicts with XL in some way. Put on a clean build and see if you still have the problem...

good luck,
tsw

Thanks and it's SP2. I can try that but it just seemed weird that if I look at the task manager Xlobby was the one taking up all of the cpu. Can that still need a reinstall of the OS???

[scottw]

Ok a little update.

First off just using Xscript, I still have the problem. I added all of the plugins back in and restarted XL and left it on. Yesterday I added a cpu monitor that would stay up on the screen so could monitor the CPU at all times, I got it from here: http://www.hexagora.com/en_dw_davperf.asp
While I was away my wife started a playlist and had listened to it for about an hour. I went and looked at the CPU monitor and it was maxed out at 100%, so I was wrong by ASSuming that standby was causing the problem and it looks like it was not. You know what they say about ASSumptions

Just now I remembered that a few months ago I added port 8000 to my routers Port Forward list so I could control XL from my PDA phone. I wonder if someone was hammering that port and caused XL to max the CPU out, does this sound possible. I had just looked at the CPU monitor and it was fine. I went to my laptop and removed the port forward rule to close the port, about 10-15min later I looked at the CPU monitor and guess what it was maxed out. I tried to reproduce the problem by adding the port forward back in and then remove it but it did nothing. Hopefully this was it but somehow I doubt it.

Let me know if anyone has any ideas.

I will post back my results.

[S Pittaway]

Something just poped into my head, you arent using WinAmp are you?

If so there was a bug in Milkdrop that caused it to max the cpu out when music wasent playing... sounds a bit similar!

Make sure that nothing is starting up a instance of milkdrop or try updating to the latest version.


Sean.