Saturday January 10
11:48
Crimson Herring
It appears I was wrong about Syncback SE causing this problem.
While the problem occurred with Syncback SE, I was also able to reproduce the issue just doing a plain network copy. It appears to be an issue copying between Vista and one of my NAS drives – the same drive which required the configuration change to get authentication to work. My other NAS drives work fine, both with copy and Syncback.
After a random amount of time – somewhere between 5 to 20 minutes usually – copying files to that NAS (a Netorage), the computer will just lock up. No screen output, no reaction from the keyboard, can’t remote login via logmein. It’s not in sleep or hibernation, but it’s not working – the only option is to reboot.
I’m not best chuffed that Vista and my NAS don’t play well together. Vista really shouldn’t crash so badly, and, more importantly, it’s the only NAS I have which both accepts Korean characters and has enough disk space to be my backup NAS. I wonder if it will work with XP under virtualisation?
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Nikon D700
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Nikon D90
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Panasonic DMC-G1
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Panasonic DMC-GH1/G1HD (check availability)
Ok, so it appears to be an issue related to copying to this specific NAS. Unlikely to be graphics card related. I would try changing the network device settings:
Device manager – Network adapters – right click the ethernet – advanced – speed – change to fixed speed, try full duplex first and if not then half.
Another thing you can try is in control panel – programs – turn windows features – uncheck remote differential compression.
Something related to the communications negotiation with this device is causing vista to choke, probably a bug in vista from what I can see online from people having problems with network transfers on some devices.
Thanks for the suggestions, I will try them out. Since the crash time is random, it can take a long time to work threw the possibilities – sometimes it appears to work for an hour before going down.
I tried the same NAS with my laptop 32-bit Vista installation and no problems so far. That narrows down the problem to (1) a 64-bit Vista issue, (2) a network card driver issue, (3) something specific to the home-build PC. I guess a 4th potential is that there’s a difference in Vista power saving for laptops and desktops.
A natural next step would be to install 32-but Vista on the desktop and see whether copying to the NAS works.
I installed 32-bit Vista Ultimate and got the same issue, so it’s something specific to this PC rather than Vista.
I’m guessing, like you said, it’s probably the settings on the network card (network card is different on both machines). There are many settings available however, so it could take time.
I should have a USB network card kicking about. If it works on 64-bit Vista then I’ll try that to see whether I get the same issue (I scrubbed 32-bit Vista already).
Last night it crashed uploading to Flickr. Assuming that this wasn’t just a random crash (unlikely) this means my NAS doesn’t appear to be the root cause, though it certainly exasperates the problem.
So what do I have so far?
1. The issue has only ever happened, as far as I can recall, when I’m doing something network related.
2. I think also that it has only happened when the display is switched off or in sleep – ie. I don’t think I’ve seen the screen freeze; but I’ve tested so many permutations that I can’t remember 100%.
Unfortunately it appears to be random enough that I can’t detect the exact cause – ie, changing something and having no crash for a day or two or more doesn’t necessarily mean the problem is gone. That makes it difficult to tweak individual settings.
I still have a suspicion that it is power management related. Next steps are:
1. Disable CPU power management. AMD seems to vary the Mhz between 1000 to 2700Mhz every second, which affects the memory speed. If power management is the issue, this should solve the problem.
2. Try the USB network card (assuming it has Vista drivers).
3.
Try removing remote differential compression as Eyal suggested.Unlikely to help since Flickr upload wouldn’t use this.Progress – though I can’t say it’s progress that pleases me.
I run turned off processor power saving (in Vista) and run the Prime 95 torture test. Half way through the computer died – blue screen, though not a BSOD blue screen.
No network traffic involved. No display sleep.
Coretemp temperature was 15-35 degrees.
So I can reproduce the problem and have finally “seen” it happen. Unfortunately, it seems to be something fundamental if I can’t run the Prime 95 test!
Currently running through memtest – all going well so far. Noticed just now that Asus have release three updates in the last two weeks – bios, lan, and audio. Hopefully one of those will fix this (though no mention of this problem in release notes).
Interesting.
Previously there was no BSOD though, at least that you could catch? When you recovered from the crash/freeze in previous times did Win indicate it had a crash in the startup options? Anything in the events log?
If you suspect it’s a MB issue you can try and look through the comments here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16813131324 maybe someone had encountered this before.
Btw, did the flickr crash happen when you were on LAN or Wireless network connection? i.e. is your internet connection going thru the same device as the NAS connection?
I left Prime 95 running all night and no issues, so you can see how inconsistent this is.
Yes, it’s progress I could see the crash. It’s not a BSOD though. The screen goes a different colour blue/green and there’s almost a faint vertical banding. No error is displayed. Upon restart, Windows recongnises it crashed but there is nothing in the error log (that I can find). Ie, it is just freezing rather than crashing gracefully.
The flickr crash happened using LAN. Previously my NAS was also my internet router; I changed my network setup last week to use a different router instead, so now that NAS is only used as a NAS. Therefore in theory it should have impact on the LAN. (As an aside: I’ve just realised that the successful copy to that NAS happened after I stopped using it as a router.)
This morning I updated the BIOS of the motherboard to the latest (release a few days ago) and also updated the LAN driver. I had to leave before I could update the Audio driver but I did start the torture test running again anyway. Just checked via logmein and it’s still going.
Thanks for the newegg link – will read through.
I updated the BIOS, LAN driver, and Audio driver with the new versions that have appeared on the Asus website; I turned off Cool and Quiet; And I set Vista minimum CPU performance to 100%.
I’ve since copied 140GB to my “problem” NAS without issue – it never completed once before; I’ve run Prime 95 overnight; and I run Prime 95 and NAS copy at the same time during today – all without failure.
I’m cautious about saying the problem is gone because I’ve thought it was gone several times before, but it’s looking good so far. Certainly impressed that Asus seems to update drivers regularly.