RE: Media Player Hangs with Hyper-Threading On

From: DBerrett (DBerrett_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 12/10/04

  • Next message: Jim Travis [ms]: "Re: "Secure storage protection error" on DRM files." 
    Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 12:59:04 -0800

    We are seeing the same exact thing. We only have a single instance of WMP
    embedded in our form and are constantly looping many WMV-HD files non-stop.
    We had to turn off HyperThreading as well to get them to run more than a few
    hours without hanging the app.

    Can anyone from the WMP team chime in on some suggestions?

    Thanks.
    Doug

    "itzkakarot" wrote:

    > Greetings experts,
    >
    > This is a rather difficult and intricate problem that my company is having
    > with several of our systems that hopefully you all may be able to help me
    > with it. I have also posted this question in the "Windows Media\Windows
    > Media Player" newsgroup in hopes that they may be able to help.
    >
    > At my company, we create multi-channel solutions which display ADs in the
    > following formats: static images (JPG), Flash movies (SWF), or full motion
    > videos (MPG ,MPEG, AVI, WMV). We discovered a unique situation where the
    > Windows Media Player component hangs (Not Responding) after playing for
    > several hours. This issue ONLY arises when we are attempting to play at
    > least 2 movie files on two separate monitors, and the length of time at which
    > a particular monitor hangs is random. For the most part, which monitor hangs
    > is also random, however the monitor in Channel 1 seems to fail less
    > frequently.
    >
    > We have narrowed down this problem somewhat, and we think that what's
    > happening is two movies are attempting to do something at literally the same
    > exact time (whether it's two movies trying to start together, or one trying
    > ot start and the other stopping, or some other occurrence). The software is
    > the only thing that fails, and when it does the hardware is fully functional
    > without any issues. This problem is directly related to Hyper-threading. We
    > run all HT processors now and when we turn HT off, the system never fails.
    > Once we turn HT back on, it fails in a matter of hours (sometimes minutes).
    >
    > We have run tests on several different machines with multiple hardware
    > configurations and multiple file formats (MPG, AVI, WMV). All tests have
    > show failure with HT turned on, and success with HT turned off. I have
    > listed the harware specs of our test machines below. Is it possible there is
    > an issue with multiple instances of Media Player and the Hyper-Threading
    > technology? I know there was an issue with TV-Tuners and HT that MS released
    > a hotfix for (KB article: 817589). We have about 100 clients that have
    > multiple multi-channel systems and we have never seen this issue (in 5 years
    > of operation) until now.
    >
    > Here is a list of the different hardware configurations we have currently on
    > our test systems. We have several PCs with the exact same configuration.
    > On all of these configurations, turning HT on ALWAYS causes an eventual
    > failure (Not Responding) and turning HT off NEVER causes a failure.
    >
    > System 1:
    > Windows XP SP1
    > Pentium 4 - Hyper Threaded 3.00 GHz
    > 512 MB RAM
    > Colorgraphic Xentera GT (AGP Card) - 2 channels
    > Colorgraphic Xentera GT (PCI card) - 2 channels, only 1st is used
    > Notes: The third channel (PCI Card) seems to fail the most frequently.
    >
    > System 2:
    > Windows XP SP1
    > Pentium 4 - Hyper Threaded 2.80 GHz
    > 512 MB RAM
    > Colorgraphic Xentera GT (AGP) - 2 channels
    >
    > System 3:
    > Windows XP SP2
    > Pentium 4 - Hyper Threaded 3.00 GHz
    > 512 MB RAM
    > Colorgraphic Xentera GT (AGP) - 2 channels
    >
    > System 4:
    > Windows XP SP2
    > Pentium 4 - Hyper Threaded 2.60 GHz
    > 512 MB RAM
    > Colorgraphic Xentera GT (AGP) - 2 channels
    >
    > We've seen failures in both SP1 and SP2. All systems have all current
    > updates and patches from Windows Update. Any help you can offer in this
    > matter would be very much appreciated!
    >
    > Thanks,
    > itzkakarot

  • Next message: Jim Travis [ms]: "Re: "Secure storage protection error" on DRM files."

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