RDC/2.06a Issue

[PeterSt]

Brian,

I only now read this (somehow) :

Set up a RDC connection using a Netgear Wifi Range Extender which is hard wired to the audio PC.

Maybe the culprit is in there. I mean, possibly the PC responds differently to that than to a direct connection.
Can't you try a cable and see whether then the culprit does not appear ? Thus, Audio PC and laptop directlty connected by network cable ?

Peter

[boleary]

I suppose so, for testing purposes, but I'd need two 60 to 75 ft cables as the router is on the first floor and music is on the third floor. Long term I'd have to figure a way to get them up here without running up two staircases and through three rooms...Not likely I'll be able to get those cables today. Was hoping an easier fix might be reinstalling the 10586 OS, given your post about how things will go wrong if you change XX service settings in unattanded, which I did several days ago.

Brian

[boleary]

Brian,

I only now read this (somehow) :

Set up a RDC connection using a Netgear Wifi Range Extender which is hard wired to the audio PC.

Maybe the culprit is in there. I mean, possibly the PC responds differently to that than to a direct connection.
Can't you try a cable and see whether then the culprit does not appear ? Thus, Audio PC and laptop directlty connected by network cable ?

Peter

Only yesterday did I realize that the text in bold meant connecting the Audio PC and server PC to each other. As my reply above indicates, I interpreted your statement to mean that  I needed two cables directly connected to the router. I had been using WiFi on the server PC for the RDC connection to the hard wired Audio PC -- I had the Audio PC directly connected to the Netgear WiFi extender. Yesterday, after purchasing a USB3 ethernet adapter, I hard wired the Server PC to the Netgear wifi extender and then directly connected the Server to the audio pc and all works perfectly. Don't even need the two 75 foot cables......

Again Peter, thanks for your patience and for all the email support.

Old dogs new tricks, nah.....

Brian

[Rmalits]

Hi folks,

a few days ago a had similar issues: When playing with XXHE in unattended mode I got stuck, not always, sometimes it was doing ok. Then again I got stuck almost every time I played in unattended mode.

But I should start from the beginning:
Since almost half a year I am using XXHE on the audio PC, which I bought from Peter with my Synology NAS. So the audio PC loads the music files directly from my Synology NAS, what I really like, becaused I am used doing this that way for years with various DACs and network players. And there is a way to have the audio PC in the home network without running into the Windows 10 update trap. I will put the infos, how do that into another post soon.

Now back to the RDC issue in this post:
As the RDC frontend, it's a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 notebook, is only used as control, because the music files are directly loaded from the Synology NAS to the audio PC, I started to use RDC via Wifi for the MS Surface notebook about three weeks ago.
And... bingo! That worked perfectly! I always was playing in unattended mode - no pronlems at all. I did not get stuck even once with RDC.
Then I tried to use my iPAD for RDC instead of the Microsoft Surface: The same result: Controlling thr audio PC directly with my iPAD worked the same way without one single problem.
For me that was a big improvement of usability: no notebook needed, no LAN cable across my living room, just great...
All the time I was using XXHE version 2.05.

Then the days came, when I suddenly ran into severe RDC problems. Unluckilly, what happened was a time conincidence of several changes during the same hours and days:

1) I installed the update of XXHE version 2.06a. After some minor problems it worked the same way with RDC over Wifi, but the stability was gone, as I described above in the beginning of this post. RDC got stuck frequently, but only when playing in unattended mode. So I thought, that this must be a XXHE 2.06 issue (now I know, I was wrong)
A dozen and more of emails were transmitted between Peter and me (a big, big thank you to Peter for this great and so fast support!).

2) The same day, right after the upgrading to XXHE on the audio PC, I installed XXHE on my MS Surface notebook for the first time, to be able to use Tidal in future. So we thought that this could also have caused the RDC troubles in some way.

3) The same days, when we were doing all these installations and trouble shooting there was somehing else different in my home network, what I did not take into account:
I had new IT stuff installed into my home network, like a new TV set, Google cromecast and so on. My house was full with guest, some of them using the home network intensivly. Imagine two boys in the age of 14 doing video games through the internet all day (and night).

First we found out, that changing back to the LAN cable worked. No interruptions of RDC any more. So I was using it that way again and I could enjoy music played in unattended mode again.

Then I thought about all that a bit and found the most simple sollution:
I switched off all the devices connected to my home network, switch off all the internet devices, firewall, routers, hubs and started the network from new.
And bingo again! Everying is working now again the same way. I can use RDC over Wifi again without any poblems.

So what is the experience of all this long story:
Using RDC in unattended mode needs proper and fast network connections. When it is used only as a control for the audio PC, it also works over Wifi. But Wifi must be stable and fast responding!

Learning about this issue, I will have one more change to my home network: I will install a 5 GHz Wifi router in my living room area. It works well now again with the 2.4 GHz router, I am using now. But 5 GHz will probably make it even more stable.

Best regards
Richard

[PeterSt]

Hi Richard - thank you for sharing this all !

Please keep a close eye on this, because I wonder whether this is speed or bandwidth related indeed. Maybe it is, but I have never heard of the issue (BUT which would be hard to detect, unless by the person involved, like you ).

Btw, very coincidentally I had my share of the similar situation myself just around the time of your posting. So, this is about the blue screen with the circle circling forever (OK, for a few minutes because then the RDC screen just disappears), which is the "proof" of the actual same situation. But what did I do ? IIRC I closed all down nicely, and then rebooted the server (which is the Remote to the Audio PC). But then I forgot to reconnect and now we have the different situation that Windows 10 is not able to cope with that for very long, and something falls asleep. Whatever that is, this does not occur when the RDC connection is active, which in my case is always (say for many weeks in a row). Possibly it is the Audio PC itself falling asleep (I did not watch it) which next goes unnoticed because the RDC re-connect will wake it up (uhm,  does it ?). Anyway, for me this was the very same situation now by this cause.
And as I told by email ... I think the same happens when the server is rebooted without disconnecting the RDC connection.

Btw this is 14393.0.

Maybe this too helps someone in the future.

And Richard, great that you solved it !
Kind regards,
Peter

[acg]

I had the RDC waiting, waiting, waiting screen as described and to solve it I changed the power scheme on the MusicServer so that the computer would not sleep.  That seems to have solved the problem for the last week or so.

[Rmalits]

Concernings Peter's reply above:
In my case most likely it was RD on the audio PC what got stuck (blue screen with the clock turning). What ever client I was using, the notebook or the iPAD, there was the same behaviour.
Kind regards
Richard

[PeterSt]

In my case most likely it was RD on the audio PC what got stuck (blue screen with the clock turning).

Richard, Yes, it is the Audio PC providing that screen and actually disallowing (re-)logon.

Peter

[PeterSt]

I had the RDC waiting, waiting, waiting screen as described and to solve it I changed the power scheme on the MusicServer so that the computer would not sleep.  That seems to have solved the problem for the last week or so.

Hi Anthony,

Thanks. So it seems that this implies a similar situation as (my) rebooting the Music Server PC;
The Audio PC unexpectedly does not see its host any more (your Server which went to sleep) and then something goes odd.

Regards,
Peter

[Rmalits]

Hi Peter and all others interested in this issue,

I had been in downtown Vienna, when I wrote these posts yesterday. Today I am back home and did some more testing using my MS Surface notebook as a control like usually. I also did some tries with my iPAD as a control for the audio PC.

The only time when I got the blue screen again, was when I was doing it with my iPAD, playing in unattended mode and switching to other tasks on my iPAD to do something else. When I moved back to the RDC task on my iPAD, I got the blue screen. It's seems to be that RD on the audio server falls asleep in this situation, as Peter described it. And the iPAD does not really do multitasking. So RD get frozen, which ends in the blue screen.

With the notebook it is working fine, no problem anymore, what ever I do during unattended playback. And I am still using Wifi 2.4 GHz, did not move to 5 GHz yet.
So it is mainly solved. The point is: It's important that the RDC does not get interrupted especially during unattended mode.

I like the way it works now again, but I will keep on doing some testing with my iPAD too, because until one week ago I could use it well to directly control the audio PC. We will see...

Kind regards
Richard

[PeterSt]

Thank you for sharing, Richard !

Peter

[PeterSt]

Hi,

What for sure implies the circle is when Unattended Playback is going on (LAN Services not kept, and Not Persistent - thus shut down during playback except for some small RDC stuff kept alive) ... is crossing away the RCD screen (from the remote first in line (which is the Music Server PC in my case). Thus :

Start Unattended;
Close the RDC screen on the remote controlling the Audio PC;
Restart the RDC screen;
-> Circle.
--> Requires a reboot of the Audio PC.

Thus, anything which implies this situation will run into the same.
I think it was said in this topic that when the remote is not a "windowed" one, switching to another task incurs for the same. Thinkin of it ... if this particular RDC task would be set to "runs in the background" then the problem would not occur (?). But not every app can be denoted that and I don't know about the RD apps for IOS and Android. I can't easily try that either because I don't directly control the Audio PC through these devices.

Peter

[boleary]

Not sure if it's been discussed before, but enabling the audio pc as a trusted device in the remote pc's antivirus software's firewall settings is essential for maintaining the RDC connection during unattended playback. Found that out the other day when I installed Norton 360 on my control  laptop (windows). I could make the connection and play unattended but would lose the connection once music started in unattended. Going into the firewall settings and making the audio pc a trusted device made the connection stable in unattended. Does an ipad have firewall settings?

[PeterSt]

Hi Brian, thanks for that. And No, this has not been discussed before.
Thank you for sharing this !

Peter

[Rmalits]

During the last weeks I was using XXHE a lot with my MS Surface as the remote PC controlling the audio PC. The audio PC loads the music files directly from my NAS, which is connected directly with the LAN/Wifi router.

This setup works perfectly, when only one thing is taken into consideration: If the RDC would get interupted during unattended playback, it cannot reconnect and gets stuck in the blue screen So when using a Windows PC as a remote this usually never happens, because Windows is doing real multitasking.
I case you want e.g. to reboot the remote (music) PC, this should not be done during unattended playback on the audio PC. So before doing this unattended playback should be ended. Otherwise you would get stuck in blue screen after rebooting. And it is most likely the audio PC, what is not able any more to do the RDC properly.
Attended playback would be no problem. The remote (music) PC always reconnects again with RDC to the audio PC.

Using an iPAD:
The above behaviour is the reason, why it is unstable to use an iPAD to controll the audio PC directly via RDC. It works as long as your iPAD is active in this RDC task. If you change into another task during unattended playback and switch back later, you may get stuck in the blue sceen.
The reason for this is, that iOS does mutitasking but switches off the Wifi connection of every background task after about 2 minutes to save battery power. There is no way to change this behaviour of iOS, exept maybe with the newest types of iPAD, which are able to run two tasks equally, one beside of the other (I don't have one that is able to do that).
I got these infos about iOS from my son Clemens who is creating iOS apps professionally.

So, to use an iPAD directly as a remote to control the audio PC, it works well with playback in attended mode but is unstable in unattended mode.

Kind regards
Richard