Hi,
Since yesterday I have this 'strange' phenomenon:
When I download a body with UE and the program tries to save the attachment to my HD the whole program 'freezes'. It will start a few seconds after the saving process begins en will last for about 30-60 seconds. At that time it seems the program stops downloading the rest of the bodies.
I have tried to close the firewall and my virusscanner, but none will help.
This 'phenomenom' just suddenly appears.
Any help will be much appreciated.
Thxs in advane, Robert
Freezing while saving attachment
is the hard drive ok (check for errors/bad sectors/fragmentation) and there is no other interference? do other applications/whole computer freeze as well?
in principle saving attachments utilize a separate thread, if there is a problem with the hard drive though it might freeze the main thread as well since some other disk operations (e.g. loading/unloading newsgroups) use the main thread.
in principle saving attachments utilize a separate thread, if there is a problem with the hard drive though it might freeze the main thread as well since some other disk operations (e.g. loading/unloading newsgroups) use the main thread.
Hi Alex,
I have defragmented and checked all my harddisks. but no errors.
I have tried to store the attachments to another folder or HD but the problem remains.
Also deleting the program and installing it on another HD or intalling an earlier version did not help.
Als I deleted all the programs I have recently installed but that did not help either.
The problem also occurs when I have no other program running.
While UE is saving the downloaded attachment it seems my whole computer freezes and I cannot switch to another program. It will last for about 2 minutes. I also switchedd off the firewall but that did not help.
Any virusprogram problem maybe? I use NOD32 latest version.
Other usenet programs do not give any problem.
Do you have another suggestion?
Many thanks,
Robert
I have defragmented and checked all my harddisks. but no errors.
I have tried to store the attachments to another folder or HD but the problem remains.
Also deleting the program and installing it on another HD or intalling an earlier version did not help.
Als I deleted all the programs I have recently installed but that did not help either.
The problem also occurs when I have no other program running.
While UE is saving the downloaded attachment it seems my whole computer freezes and I cannot switch to another program. It will last for about 2 minutes. I also switchedd off the firewall but that did not help.
Any virusprogram problem maybe? I use NOD32 latest version.
Other usenet programs do not give any problem.
Do you have another suggestion?
Many thanks,
Robert
Try just downloading an article first of all without saving it. After waiting for a moment to see if any of these symptoms happen, then save the article (while nothing else is downloading in the background) and see what happens then.
Also, how many threads do you have enabled? (Properties->Tasks->Total tasks.) If you have the default (I think it is 100) which are all used and you also save at the same time then there would be a massive disk operation in progress all at once. If this is the case, reduce the total tasks right down and gradually increase it to a good balance. You need not have any more tasks than you really need if a smaller number saturates your bandwidth.
One other way (a workaround) is to suspend save until everything is downloaded and then re-enable saves.
UE is one of the best bandwidth hoggers and if it can download a lot quickly, it can save a lot quickly. This all adds up.
Also, how many threads do you have enabled? (Properties->Tasks->Total tasks.) If you have the default (I think it is 100) which are all used and you also save at the same time then there would be a massive disk operation in progress all at once. If this is the case, reduce the total tasks right down and gradually increase it to a good balance. You need not have any more tasks than you really need if a smaller number saturates your bandwidth.
One other way (a workaround) is to suspend save until everything is downloaded and then re-enable saves.
UE is one of the best bandwidth hoggers and if it can download a lot quickly, it can save a lot quickly. This all adds up.
Try to uninstall antivirus temporarily to see whether the problem is gone then (just disabling it may not help). Or before uninstalling maybe you can try to direct the antivirus not to check attachments saved by UE (or set it not to examine certain directories and whole UE database and then save to one of such directories), I don't know what exact settings you need to engage in this particular antivirus to achieve this, if nothing helps uninstall would probably do.
UE actually saves attachments in a separate thread, maybe differently from other clients (so the program, not even mentioning the whole computer would remain responsive during saving), maybe some bug in the antivirus cannot handle examining data saved to the disk from other than the main thread.
NOD32 probably the most notorious program as to crashes coming from inside of its driver, although I didn't hear about this particular problem.
If hardware is ok and computer freezes it is most likely something on the driver level, antivirus is the first candidate.
Since it started at certain point, it affects all attachments and it is not correlated with UE update check maybe there was antivirus update around that time, on several occasions a new version of an antivirus (like Kaspersky or Zone Alarm) introduced a bug, then they were fixing the bug later with another update.
When the computer "frozen" you cannot engage task manager to see what is processor usage for example and if it is 100% which process is responsible, there are may be two scenarios if it is driver it will show the host process (e.g. UE) consuming processor, but if NOD32 runs a separate process to scan saved disk data you'll see that particular process taking the time (I think with Symantec it was the latter case at least a long time ago, I remember Internet Explorer hanging and a Norton process at 100% processor usage probably scanning the web page for viruses or security breaches - until I uninstalled the beast
).
UE actually saves attachments in a separate thread, maybe differently from other clients (so the program, not even mentioning the whole computer would remain responsive during saving), maybe some bug in the antivirus cannot handle examining data saved to the disk from other than the main thread.
NOD32 probably the most notorious program as to crashes coming from inside of its driver, although I didn't hear about this particular problem.
If hardware is ok and computer freezes it is most likely something on the driver level, antivirus is the first candidate.
Since it started at certain point, it affects all attachments and it is not correlated with UE update check maybe there was antivirus update around that time, on several occasions a new version of an antivirus (like Kaspersky or Zone Alarm) introduced a bug, then they were fixing the bug later with another update.
When the computer "frozen" you cannot engage task manager to see what is processor usage for example and if it is 100% which process is responsible, there are may be two scenarios if it is driver it will show the host process (e.g. UE) consuming processor, but if NOD32 runs a separate process to scan saved disk data you'll see that particular process taking the time (I think with Symantec it was the latter case at least a long time ago, I remember Internet Explorer hanging and a Norton process at 100% processor usage probably scanning the web page for viruses or security breaches - until I uninstalled the beast
).On mine I get temporary UE/system hangs during certain operations. There's nothing wrong with my system or UE - it's to do with my setup. I save to RAID 5 which begins calculating parity soon after I begin saving to disk. It's not noticeable when saving large articles every so often but saving many small files, one after the other (lots queued up in the save pane), performance takes a hit. I often suspend saves in these cases until everything has downloaded, then I save.alex wrote:...so the program, not even mentioning the whole computer would remain responsive during saving...
Besides, Robert already said he tried disabling his AV. Maybe there's something else, e.g. a new server (more tasks), ISP upgraded speed (more files in less time), etc.
If he has little free space, even if defragmented, then disk performance can be slow.
We don't know how many hard drives and in which configuration. Are they RAIDed and is the correct storage manager installed and configured (write back cache enabled)? How much free space is there? Anything else installed shortly before this problem occurred? Maybe he's started saving to a different (slower) drive.robert wrote:I have defragmented and checked all my harddisks. but no errors.
Having said this, I still agree AV is most likely a cause (even though he said he'd tried closing it) because I know what a pig some can be to even simply disable them. I just wanted to point out another possibility.
Hi Josef and/or Alex,
Thanks for our responses.
I have tried several things:
At first I uninstalled the virusscanner. Then I tried the whole proces again.
UE freezed again while saving attachments. I could not see anything from the taskmanager since that one freezes too . . . So I could not see wich process could be responsible for this freezing.
Then I tried to download several attachments and suspended the saving task. When trying to save I stopped downloading so no other proces seems to be running on the computer.
Again, freezing time.
I noticed one thing though: when I save several attachments, say 3, it seems that between te saving of the single attahments my computer seems to unlock (run again) for a few seconds, before it freezes again....
When I download I only use three threads from the newsserver.
I tried to install UE on different drives and also tried to save the attachments to different drives, still the problem occurs....
It is strange that when I use NewsPro, all seems to work fine. Culd there be a windows update, or something like that, responsible for the freezing?
Thanks again,
Robert
Thanks for our responses.
I have tried several things:
At first I uninstalled the virusscanner. Then I tried the whole proces again.
UE freezed again while saving attachments. I could not see anything from the taskmanager since that one freezes too . . . So I could not see wich process could be responsible for this freezing.
Then I tried to download several attachments and suspended the saving task. When trying to save I stopped downloading so no other proces seems to be running on the computer.
Again, freezing time.
I noticed one thing though: when I save several attachments, say 3, it seems that between te saving of the single attahments my computer seems to unlock (run again) for a few seconds, before it freezes again....
When I download I only use three threads from the newsserver.
I tried to install UE on different drives and also tried to save the attachments to different drives, still the problem occurs....
It is strange that when I use NewsPro, all seems to work fine. Culd there be a windows update, or something like that, responsible for the freezing?
Thanks again,
Robert
I think the code responsible for operations like saving are mostly pulled straight from NP. Alex can correct me on this if I'm wrong but if it's the case then there should be no difference between the two programs.
It's certainly a strange situation. UE's big difference is the storage: the database is vastly changed from NP giving it the stability that NP could never have, given the ever increasing levels of newsgroup sizes.
Two things you can try:
1. Go to your motherboard support page and check for any updated drivers for the chipset.
2. When you uninstall the AV, first do Start->Run and enter 'msconfig'. Then make sure to disable any references to your AV software in the Services and Startup tabs. It's easier in the Services tab to first check the box at the bottom to hide all Microsoft services. This is always the method I use when I work on a computer to remove AV (or other security software) as cleanly as possible. After you use msconfig, reboot and then uninstall the AV. I don't know about NOD but there are many types of AV out there that have horrible uninstall routines (*cough* McAfee *cough*) that leave traces of themselves in the system and don't completely and properly uninstall.
For example, a quick Google search for "nod32 removal tool" (I used the quotes in the actual search) brought up this as the top result. Not good if you see that the date is March 30th, 2008 so it's very recent and will apply to newer versions. One interesting result I found was this with a link to a removal tool.
Try uninstalling after first using msconfig, reboot, uninstall, run the removal tool and finally reboot again. Hopefully it should be the AV that's the culprit. After all, if UE is based on some NP code for the simpler operations like saving attachments and NP has no problem, then only AV or certain firewalls would be likely to interfere.
It's certainly a strange situation. UE's big difference is the storage: the database is vastly changed from NP giving it the stability that NP could never have, given the ever increasing levels of newsgroup sizes.
Two things you can try:
1. Go to your motherboard support page and check for any updated drivers for the chipset.
2. When you uninstall the AV, first do Start->Run and enter 'msconfig'. Then make sure to disable any references to your AV software in the Services and Startup tabs. It's easier in the Services tab to first check the box at the bottom to hide all Microsoft services. This is always the method I use when I work on a computer to remove AV (or other security software) as cleanly as possible. After you use msconfig, reboot and then uninstall the AV. I don't know about NOD but there are many types of AV out there that have horrible uninstall routines (*cough* McAfee *cough*) that leave traces of themselves in the system and don't completely and properly uninstall.
For example, a quick Google search for "nod32 removal tool" (I used the quotes in the actual search) brought up this as the top result. Not good if you see that the date is March 30th, 2008 so it's very recent and will apply to newer versions. One interesting result I found was this with a link to a removal tool.
Try uninstalling after first using msconfig, reboot, uninstall, run the removal tool and finally reboot again. Hopefully it should be the AV that's the culprit. After all, if UE is based on some NP code for the simpler operations like saving attachments and NP has no problem, then only AV or certain firewalls would be likely to interfere.
newspro has multi-stream saving, in UE attachments are saved in a single stream (otherwise it would be too difficult to handle the much faster db synchronization). so in UE this is like simpler in this regard.
did you try to copy the UE database to another partition (then properties->general->change db folder). do you have newspro db on / save to the same partition as UE?
or maybe do you have clean windows install or another computer to try it?
windows update unlikely could trigger such behaviour.
even if UE would cause 100% processor usage (and saving is low-processor usage activity) still the system would normally remain responsive well above the freezing level. if you have dual core processor UE is unlikely to take more than a single core.
did you try to copy the UE database to another partition (then properties->general->change db folder). do you have newspro db on / save to the same partition as UE?
or maybe do you have clean windows install or another computer to try it?
windows update unlikely could trigger such behaviour.
even if UE would cause 100% processor usage (and saving is low-processor usage activity) still the system would normally remain responsive well above the freezing level. if you have dual core processor UE is unlikely to take more than a single core.
Hi guys,
Thxs to some of your suggestions I think I solved the problem:
I tried before UE when switching off my firewall (wich is part of Outpost Security Suite) and the problem still exists.
Now I totally uninstalled the firewall package and suddenly all from UE seemed to work well (I also uninstalled some Raxco drivers from Perfect Disk).
Installing the whole suite from Outpost gave the problems back again. Now I switched to the Firewall Pro version from Outpost and I do not seem to have any problems anymore.
Again, thanks for your support!
Robert
Thxs to some of your suggestions I think I solved the problem:
I tried before UE when switching off my firewall (wich is part of Outpost Security Suite) and the problem still exists.
Now I totally uninstalled the firewall package and suddenly all from UE seemed to work well (I also uninstalled some Raxco drivers from Perfect Disk).
Installing the whole suite from Outpost gave the problems back again. Now I switched to the Firewall Pro version from Outpost and I do not seem to have any problems anymore.
Again, thanks for your support!
Robert