[stephanem]

Good evening everyone,
I've searched for hours and finally deciced to post before this drives me crazy.

Platform :
High-end Clevo laptop, Win 7 Entreprise 64bits, Radeon 7970M.
It has been running XBMC flawlessly for over a year, and specifically v12 RC3 for months.

Problem :
Last week it suddenly stopped working from one evening to the next.
By this, I mean that xbmc.exe process is present in task manager, taking between 6 and 10Mb memory, but strictly nothing happens anymore. I won't even get a startup screen, freeze, black or white screen ... nothing at all (killing the process is useless of course).
In those 24 hours I did not perform any "active" change to my system (nothing installed or uninstalled).

I tried pretty much every solution I could find :
1) clean uninstall (standard uninstall + profile wipe + registry keys wiped + verified every possible hidden folders etc...)
2) then reinstalling same version that had worked flawlessly for months
3) also tried clean uninstalls and reinstall other versions (12.2, 11, 10)
4) also tried to increase debug log to "2" or "3" but could not see anything obvious in it, and not even sure it really gets updated since I don't know at what level exactly the application "stops".

So I did the following :
1) on 15th June evening I loaded back a system image I had from mid-march, containing my working installation of XBMC 12.0 rc3
2) it worked fine again on the evenings of June 16th, 17th and 18th
3) it stopped working again on the evening of June 19th
4) During that time I did not perform any changes to my system.
5) Checking Windows updates : it did tens of updates on June 16th (normal, since it was a system image from mid-March it had to catch up).
on 19th June in the morning it only did 2 updates, related to .NET Framework.
Since it stopped working between June 18th evening & 19th evening, I searched to see if any link could be made between these 2 updates and my problem but could not find any significant post...

I'm running out of ideas and missing this great software, any ideas please anyone ??

NB : I've been using XBMC for years (back from 1st Xbox) on various machines, never encountered that kind of problem.

Best regards,
Stéphane

[TRaSH]

Did you try to uninstall and keep your user data.
And install a newer version.
Rc3 is pretty outdated.
Perhaps there was a update for something.
You could give it a try.
You got a backup image any way

[stephanem]

Thanks for the idea but yes, it's one of the many things I did already.
I tried all combinations (keeping profile or not, removing registry keys or not), with stable final versions of Xbmc 10, 11 and 12
The real question is : it was stable for months, working flawlessly, and suddenly in 24h it doesn't load up anymore, while I did nothing to the system. The xbmc.exe process is present in memory, just nothing happening anymore.
The fact that reloading an old system image made it work again, and then stop again made me think about the windows updates I'm pointing at in 1st message, but I could not establish any link, and uninstalling those 2 .Net updates had no effect either.

Crazy thing :-(

[TRaSH]

Try to restore a image.
Then disable the Windows update.
This way you can be sure if it's the Windows update our not.

[gabsaoleo]

There's a video on how to fix this by the XBMCHub guys.
Here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRCnwBbFqRM

I've tried what you tried and couldn't get it to work until I've tried this video.

It worked for me!

[stephanem]

@gabsaoleo : well, the link you give is merely audio problem troubleshoot, very simple and nothing to do with what I described...

---

@TRaSH : well, correct in theory, even if it's not the updater in itself but rather these two .Netframework updates.
And you can't leave your windows system not updating forever...

[DiscoDenny]

I seem to be having the same issue and it started sometime over the weekend. I can see XBMC.exe in the process list though the app does not appear be running. Please let me know if you find a fix.

Thanks
Denny

[stephanem]

Well Denny that sounds like my problem (you can never be sure wether it will be the same cause though).
Are you also running Windows 7 Entreprise 64bits ?

[TRaSH]

Well I got Windows update on my htpc disabled.
But then I only use it as a htpc.
But you could give it a try.
Then you could test if there are any plugins that cause the issue

[stephanem]

yes Trash, if I only had XBMC running I would do that as a workaround, but it's my main laptop.
Plug-ins : if it was one of them, my clean uninstall / reinstall would have solved it, so it's not that.

[stephanem]

Well well well, got it working again.

Went to Msconfig :
checked the "diagnosis" box
disabled all programs at startud (except only nod32).
all system services left enabled.

This proves it is one of the programs/subprograms running on startup, and since I did not install anything new between the working/non-working events, it has to be either a program I had that updated itself, or a new one that did a silent install.

I'll try to isolate which one causes this bug and will report here.

[stephanem]

Allright, I narrowed it down to one of these 2 :
Daemon Tools Lite
Java™ Platform SE autoupdater 2.0

I'm betting it is this #]~]@[~@][@ of Daemon Tools, sounds logical since it can mess up with virtual drives.
Result at next reboot

[stephanem]

Result : it was Daemon Tools Lite.
Fully uninstalled it in safe mode, then "normal" reboot and XBMC is back on track, YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS ! :-)