[vlad1966]

Please help. I'm using the latest version of XMBC (Frodo) on my HTPC running Windows 8.1.
I've made a shortcut of XBMC and copied it to my Startup Items folder because I want XBMC to launch automatically any time I boot my HTPC.

XBMC crashes on boot (as soon as the program tries to start at boot, windows shows a "XBMC has crashed, windows is checking for a cause . . ." but of coarse it doesn't find one.)

*** The funny thing is though, after I close out of the "XBMC has crashed" error message, I can manually start XBMC EVERY SINGLE TIME by clicking the link that's pinned to my Taskbar.
This processes is repeatable every single time.

It's a system w/a Athlon 64 X4 630 CPU, 4GB RAM, ATI Radeo HD 5450 video card, 6 3GB HDDs, 120GB SATA SSD boot drive with XBMC installed to it.
This system also serves as my file server.
I wouldn't think it's a hardware issue.
I've disabled a few Startup Items, the only ones remaining is my F-Secure antivirus service, and a couple of other things that shouldn't matter.

I've tried searching inside XBMC's options to start the program automatically when the PC boots, but wasn't able to find one.

Please Help!

[PatK]

Something is not loaded when XBMC executes, you need to put a delay in (say -5 or 10 sec) to give the O/S time to load libraries etc.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=XBMC_for_Win...ecific_FAQ

Upon booting, start XBMC with a delay

When starting XBMC on Windows startup it can be that some sub services weren't started when XBMC is up. To delay XBMC just add the parameter -d X (in the Target field after the closing quotation mark) to the shortcut's properties used to launch XBMC, with X equal to the startup delay in seconds.

"C:\Program Files\XBMC\XBMC.exe" -d 10

[vlad1966]

I appreciate the response, however I tried this and it didn't work. I tried -d 10 then 20, 30, 60 & got the same result as before. Even tried -d -5.

Funny thing is, it's completely reproducable. Even if I don't try to have it auto launch from within the Startup Items folder (if i try to manually launch the program) it will always crash on 1st launch attempt. Then if I try to launch it a split second later, it will always launch the 2nd time no problem. I've never seen a Windows program behave like this.

Something is not loaded when XBMC executes, you need to put a delay in (say -5 or 10 sec) to give the O/S time to load libraries etc.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=XBMC_for_Win...ecific_FAQ

Upon booting, start XBMC with a delay

When starting XBMC on Windows startup it can be that some sub services weren't started when XBMC is up. To delay XBMC just add the parameter -d X (in the Target field after the closing quotation mark) to the shortcut's properties used to launch XBMC, with X equal to the startup delay in seconds.

"C:\Program Files\XBMC\XBMC.exe" -d 10

[PatK]

If you want to fix the issue, you'll have to turn on debug post links to the crash log and debug, linked back to a message here. I take it, that the program crashes even after the O/S is up and operational, but the second attempt works? Might be a bad memory block allocation.