WO minimizes its window on the display computer

[Alexey]

Hello everyone.

Maybe someone has met such a behavior of WO already: the display computer unexpectedly minimizes its window but continues to work. In our case it happens usually about 4 hours after starting. No notifications at all. This project initially has been installed about 6 months ago. After that there were some additions in content, updating WO etc. We encountered the minimized window problem a couple of weeks ago. It doesn't mean that the problem hadn't existed earlier, because our installation usually works less than 4 hours.

Configuration:

1 PC with 3 outputs to 2 x Projectors Canon XEED WUX 450ST + 1 x Monitor 90" NEC MultiSync E905

Windows Emb 10

Intel Core i5-6500 3.2GHz

mATX ASUS H110M-R/C/SI

Sapphire AMD Radeon RX 570 NITRO+ 4GB GDDR5

2xDIMM DDR4 (2400) 8Gb

WO 6.2.2

There are also some specific features in the project, like NDI stream, virtual screens and projection on 3D objects.

It seems we don't have any unneseccary software on the PC and Windows Emb has been tweaked quite thoroughly.

Actually, I wonder, who might be the culprit? Any ideas?

[JJ Myers]

Hi, I believe we have encountered what you are describing as well. Although, it appears to me less like Watchpoint is minimized and more like it simply no longer displays anything at all. It looks more like Windows has assigned focus to something else. Our findings have been that from a task manager standpoint, Watchpoint thinks it is running completely as normal. Yet we see the desktop and no evidence that Watchpoint is running (other than task manager). If we go to Task Manager and click on "switch to" it restores back to displaying content. We also do not receive any notifications in Watchmaker, but Windows Event Log does report some information about Watchpoint no longer being responsive (or something along those lines). Does that match your experience? I would think if Watchpoint is truly "minimizing", you would indeed get some sort of feedback to your production machine, because that would mean Watchpoint has switched to "windowed mode". If our issues are indeed the same, I can tell you we have witnessed your issue in a project void of NDI, virtual displays, and projection on 3D objects.

 Recently, we have found issues of ours to resolve when we define our displays using computer names instead of IP address. Here is the post that led to this discovery:

Ever since we redefined our displays via computer name, we have not encountered the "disappearance" issue again. We are running tests 24/7 at our office in an effort to find more absolution to our findings. I would say I am 99.999% certain to our findings as it relates to the "latency" issue. We had a pretty decently reproducible test case for the "disappearance" issue as well that we could no longer get to invoke after making the display definition edit. But our the reproducibility of that test case was still much less than what we had for the "latency" issue, so I cannot say I am as certain. We, of course, will continue to run tests for as long as we can.

So my final question to you is - are you defining your displays via IP address or computer name? If so, perhaps make that edit and see if the issue resolves? Doing so will certainly help the knowledge base and I can help make sure the word on this gets out to users.

[Alexey]

JJ Myers, thank you for responce,

Yes, our displays are defined via IP addresses. But WO is certainly minimized and continues to run. There are several minimized WO windows on the taskbar. It is even possible to restore WO by clicking at the one of the windows, but the image will be freezed. However, sound is fine.   

[Alexey]

I haven't mentioned that we don't have any production computer in the project. Everything is run by Alcorn McBride controller via TCP/IP.  So I have some doubts it would be possible to change the display name from IP to computer name. Maybe is should work, but we must make some tests.

[Benoit]

Hello Alexey,

We've already seen that. Can you post a list of the app shown in the add/remove program menu?

Regards,

Benoit

[asmundboe]

On 10/30/2018 at 8:54 AM, Alexey said:

 There are several minimized WO windows on the taskbar. It is even possible to restore WO by clicking at the one of the windows, but the image will be freezed. However, sound is fine.   

Does it look like this? Because this is what happens on our display machine. They are also defined with IP and not name..

 

[Alexey]

16 hours ago, asmundboe said:

Does it look like this? Because this is what happens on our display machine. They are also defined with IP and not name..

Exactly the same! We haven't changed IP to names yet. Probably, next week we will try it and also will check the add/remove program menu. 

The temporary solution which we made is to determine automatically that WO had been minimized and restart it.

Asmundboe, don't you use NDI stream or 3D projectors in your project as well as us? I have some suspicions about them...

[asmundboe]

5 hours ago, Alexey said:

Exactly the same! We haven't changed IP to names yet. Probably, next week we will try it and also will check the add/remove program menu. 

The temporary solution which we made is to determine automatically that WO had been minimized and restart it.

Asmundboe, don't you use NDI stream or 3D projectors in your project as well as us? I have some suspicions about them...

I changed mine to Names today and still I got this bug, so I dont know.. I dont use any NDI or 3D projectors. Its just a basic 4 output normal show, 1 SDI input from blackmagic capture card.

Whats weird is that when I opened task manager, there are 5 instances running. 1 of which is named just Dataton Watchout - not Watchpoint. They are all apparently running ("kjører"= "running"). And when I end the process "Dataton Watchout", all goes back to normal! The displays go back to showing whatever they are supposed to be showing in proper full screen mode, no nonsense.

I've checked both the watchout logs and the windows event viewer - no one shows anything of note.

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[RBeddig]

Have you checked your startup items (run shell:startup) to see whether there are any other things which run in the background stealing the focus?

While tweaking a win 10 computer I also noticed that the Nvidea card installed a couple of scheduled tasks to run daily. I deleted those of course but I'm not sure whether your consumer card also has tracking or auto-update components which might be triggered once a day.

 

[asmundboe]

The only item in the startup folder is Watchpoint.

However, your tip about checking Nvidia led me to some schedule tasks.

Namely: NvNodeLauncer, NvProfileUpdaterDaily, NvProfileUpdaterOnLogon, NvTmMon, NvTmRep and NvTmRepOnLogon.

Also in the installed programs I find Nvidia Geforce Experiene.

So maybe Nvidia is the culprit somehow? Which of these prosesses should I deactivate?

I also found that disk defragmentation was enabled, scheduled for wednesdays at 4pm.. I've disabled this also, but it doesnt account for the times this bug's occurred not on wednesdays.

I've attached a list of the planned tasks as well as the installed programs, if anyone has further suggestions as to trimming the computer.

Some translation for the task planner:
klar = ready, i kø= queued
Utløsere = triggers
Pålogging = Logging on
Brukere = Users
hver dag = every day.

Sorry for the inconvenience of the norwegian language!

[Benoit]

Hello Alexey,

Please remove Apple Software Update and tell me if you still have the issue.

Regarding the many instance, you should have one Watchout instance and one Watchpoint instance for each output so it seems your server has 4 displays...

Regards,

Benoit

[RBeddig]

NvTmMon, NvTmRep and NvTmRepOnLogon are not needed. They only spy on your computer. The other Nvidea items should also not be neccessary. Also I would not install all those Nvidea drivers, except if you use the 3D capability or want to do gaming. On my computer I only have the graphic and audio drivers installed. Apple software update has caused issues on some computers built by my clients in the past. 

[asmundboe]

Thanks for your help, everyone. I'm on day 5 now without the bug occurring so we may have found it.

For posterity, what I did then was delete the tasks inn the task scheduler that nvidia had put there. For some reason it would not let me delete them directly there - so I had to go into windows/system32/tasks and delete them manually there. They did not reappear after rebooting.

I did also uninstall Apple Software Update.

[JJ Myers]

Glad to see more attention and information to this issue. Has anyone in this discussion had this happen on a version earlier than v6.2.2? That is the only version we have seen this happen on, so my suspicion is v6.2.2 is when this became an issue. My other suspicion after reading this is that 2 different variables can potentially factor in the invocation of this bug:

1. Environmental factors, like what it appears to have been the case for asmundboe

2. Naming your displays via ip address instead of name, which appears to be the culprit in our case

There are already several noted bugs involved with defining displays by ip address, so that is an easy one to just avoid from now on. Obviously, we may ultimately find that our experience was also environmentally influenced, but we had a pretty clear cut test case/project that we would run defined by ip address and hit the bug at least once per day. There were even events in the Windows Events log that correlated with the time of the bug invocation. We would then run the same exact test project, except defined by computer names - and find it to run for several days straight... and never invoke that bug. Ever since we had discovered issues surrounding ip address display definition, I have been a pretty strong advocate of getting the word out there. It takes a minute or 2 to re-define your displays by computer name and can avoid so many potential issues. It really is a no-brainer.

[zackboyd]

I'm using IP address on 6.2.2 just fine.

I have a Radeon pro rather than NVidea and I also do not install quicktime. 

I've had boot sequencing issues with machines running quicktime since v5. Try wiping that and doing a clean install of watchout without quicktime. I'd be curious if that fixes it.

[stiegzinator]

6 hours ago, JJ Myers said:

Glad to see more attention and information to this issue. Has anyone in this discussion had this happen on a version earlier than v6.2.2? That is the only version we have seen this happen on, so my suspicion is v6.2.2 is when this became an issue.

We had this issue happening to us a couple years ago, shortly after v6 was brand new. We ended up creating a work around/check for it, and not really solving the root cause, so couldn't add much to the discussion. My suspicion is that it's something that rarely happened before, but might have been exacerbated with v6.2.2. I can say that we were using display addresses and not names, so that could have still been a factor, as you were guessing.

[callum]

Hi all,

Not to resurect an old thread but I seem to be having a similar issue with some of my display machines as well! The computers only have 2 items in the startup folder, codemeter and a shortcut to watchpoint.exe (with some parameters such as a showfile directory) Recently when I start the computers the watchpoint software appears to start but then shortly after minimizes to the tray. There are then 2 sets of Watchout icons on the task-bar.

We fix this by closing the applications and then re-launching it from the start-up folder.

When I am on-site next I am planning to check if there's anything in the run shell:startup section that is un-needed.

 

Just wanted to see if anyone had encountered this recently with the latest release.

 

Cheers

[salmino]

For some reason it would not let me delete them directly there - so I had to go into windows/system32/tasks and delete them manually there. They did not reappear after rebooting.

 

 

 

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