How to debug crash in MePo 1.7 probably caused by plugin (1 Viewer)

Tim Whittington

Portal Member
May 19, 2012
7
4
Home Country
New Zealand New Zealand
Since upgrading to 1.7, playing any of a group of .avi files in Videos has consistently crashed MePo after 1-3 play/stops.
There's a "Cannot access a disposed object" error in the logs while the video renderer is being created, and MePo just exits. Playing .mp4 files does not appear to cause any issues.

I did a complete reinstall (for this reason among others), and things worked fine for a while, but now it's back to crashing in the same way, so I suspect a plugin/skin that I've installed in the interim is causing the problem.

When running in debug and disable plugins mode (option 1 in Watchdog) video playing works fine.
Running with Watchdog option 2, which is claimed to only turn on debug logging fixes video playing as well.

Not running via Watchdog though, if I manually disable all the plugins that can be disabled, and even remove all the plugin .dlls that weren't installed with MePo 1.7 (admittedly using timestamp guesswork), the crashes still occur. I've also tried running with Titan and StreamedMP (removing the .dlls for the other skin) and the crash occurs in both.

I'd like to pin down which plugin/skin is causing the issue here rather than just reinstall again, but I'm not sure how to go about pinpointing what is causing this crash.

Any ideas would be appreciated (I'm even prepared to crack open a debugger if that'd help).

Logs attached are a crash while running with plugins manually disabled (MediaPortalLogs_20_04_14__23_48.zip), and not crashing when run from Watchdog option 2 (MediaPortalLogs_20_04_14__23_52.zip).
 

yoavain

Extension Dev
  • Premium Supporter
  • May 24, 2009
    427
    467
    46
    Home Country
    Israel Israel
    Don't have the time to look at logs now, but I had similar problem, where I had to follow logs.
    The one that caused problems on my setup is LatestMediaHandler. I removed it manually (since the uninstall did not remove files),
    After that, The FanartHandler database file got corrupted somehow. After removing the FanartHandler database file, everything played file.
     

    HomeY

    Test Group
  • Team MediaPortal
  • February 23, 2008
    6,475
    4,645
    49
    ::1
    Home Country
    Netherlands Netherlands
    Hi and welcome Tim ;)

    When running in debug and disable plugins mode (option 1 in Watchdog) video playing works fine.
    That's a good thing to know!

    Running with Watchdog option 2, which is claimed to only turn on debug logging fixes video playing as well.
    That's wierd, or should indicate the issue does NOT come from a plugin.

    The SuicideForm seems to come from the Refreshrate Changer.
    Maybe you can test with that disabled?
     

    Tim Whittington

    Portal Member
    May 19, 2012
    7
    4
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    Hi and welcome Tim ;)

    I'm feeling very welcome - good to get such quick & helpful responses.

    The SuicideForm seems to come from the Refreshrate Changer.
    Maybe you can test with that disabled?

    That looks like it's sorted it
    Looking in the NVIDIA control panel after one of the crashes, it left the refresh rate at 23Hz once, and 59Hz another time.
    With refresh rate changing disabled no crashes, and high WAF restored :)

    For reference, I'm running on an Asus Riva RL100 (basically a netbook ION 2 chipset) using the 335.23 WHQL Windows 7 x64 mobile drivers + inf from laptopvideo2go, which were upgraded at the same time as MePo 1.7.
    I've used RefreshRate changing in the past on the same display + system with no problems, so I suspect it was one of these two upgrades that broke things.

    From the NVIDIA control panel, I can switch the display (1080p) between 60, 59, 50, 25, 24, 23 Hz refresh with no apparent issues (which covers all the rates in the config).

    Tinkering with the MePo settings it looks like any setting of a refresh rate (59 or 23 Hz in the case of my videos) causes a crash (although not 100% of the time).
    Use device reset and Force refresh rate change don't help. Setting all the rates to 60Hz does sort the problem, but that's not so useful.

    Is there anything else I can do to help pinpoint the cause?[DOUBLEPOST=1398044617][/DOUBLEPOST]Actually I've just remembered that with MePo 1.4 and the previous drivers it would often display the "This problem has stopped responding" alert window (i.e. the one Windows shows when MePo crashes now) but would continue playing the video.

    So perhaps there's always been an issue with changing the refresh rate, but it was recovering enough to carry on playing, and 1.7 has changed behaviour a little?
     
    Last edited:

    HomeY

    Test Group
  • Team MediaPortal
  • February 23, 2008
    6,475
    4,645
    49
    ::1
    Home Country
    Netherlands Netherlands
    From the NVIDIA control panel, I can switch the display (1080p) between 60, 59, 50, 25, 24, 23 Hz refresh with no apparent issues (which covers all the rates in the config).
    And switching to those refresh rates in windows goes without problems?
    Have you checked the option to 'hide modes that this monitor cannot display'?
     

    Tim Whittington

    Portal Member
    May 19, 2012
    7
    4
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    From the NVIDIA control panel, I can switch the display (1080p) between 60, 59, 50, 25, 24, 23 Hz refresh with no apparent issues (which covers all the rates in the config).
    And switching to those refresh rates in windows goes without problems?

    Everything works fine, when switching from the Windows or NVIDIA control panels.

    Have you checked the option to 'hide modes that this monitor cannot display'?

    Double checked this is off (Windows reports the ION + Full HD display can pretty much do every mode imaginable).

    As I mentioned before, the refresh rate is being changed by the refresh rate switcher - Windows reports the refresh rate has been changed to the expected (23/59 Hz) - so the crash appears to be after the change is made, and doesn't happen if the desired refresh rate is already set in Windows.

    i.e. I've tested the following sequence with the refresh rate changer enabled set to restore the refresh rate to ATSCHD/60Hz after playing:
    • Set refresh rate to 59Hz in Windows control panel
    • Play .avi with 59Hz desired rate
    • Playing video works.
    • Stop video
    • Play same .avi with 59Hz desired rate
    • Playing video crashes MePo
     

    Tim Whittington

    Portal Member
    May 19, 2012
    7
    4
    Home Country
    New Zealand New Zealand
    Tried to reproduce this on 2 systems + a VM, but still haven't succeeded and i'm starting to run out of ideas... :(
    @Sebastiii any thoughts?

    Playing video crashes MePo
    Could you post those logs?

    Posted logs.
    First set is for the 59Hz work/crash scenario, and the second set is the same scenario with debug logging (Watchdog option 2) in which it works both times the video is played (resetting the refresh rate to 60Hz after each play).

    Additional info that might hopefully be useful:
    • Fully updated Windows 7 Ultimate N + Windows Media Player pack
    • TightVNC 2.7.10 is installed and running
    • Multi user Remote Desktop patch is in place (although that's unlikely to break this?)
    • Same results whether RDP and VNC sessions are active or not.
    • ION chipset is overclocked (actually properly-clocked: it's the 8 core Netbook edition and is underclocked out of the box, so needs a little extra oomph for 50fps 1080p DVBT)
     

    Sebastiii

    Development Group
  • Team MediaPortal
  • November 12, 2007
    16,583
    10,403
    France
    Home Country
    France France
    Hi :)
    This is a DLL based on 1.7.0 Final (I have comment out the FixDWM call).
    It seems like HomeY find that it crash on thread related to suicideform (i'm sure it's for vista related but not anymore needed for Win7 and Win8)

    Can you try ? :)
     

    Attachments

    • Core_DRR_DWM_Off.zip
      1.1 MB

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom