XBMC freezing Windows 7

Hello everybody! First of all thank you for this amazing software!!
I need your help because I have big troubles with nightly builds of XBMC.
When I start XBMC, after a couple of seconds the icon on the windows taskbar disappear. So, I open the Task Manager, I select the "Processes" tab and I try to kill XBMC.exe without success because the process remains open even if I repeatedly kill XBMC.exe. At the same time I notice that the system become unresponsive and the CPU percentage usage of the Image name "System" fluctuate between 20 and 80%.
So, I try to reboot my system and after a long time of "shutdown in progress" I get the BSOD with a message of memory error. I thought that the problem was the User folder corrupted so I rename the folder under %User%/Application Data/Roaming. I start XBMC to regenerate a new user folder and it works. I quit XBMC and after a couple of hours I restart XBMC and I have the same problem. I can't kill the process and when I reboot Windows 7 I get the BSOD.
In the xbmc.log I don't have any information...it is like I never opened the program. I activate the debug log but it doesn't change anything.
I don't know because XBMC doesn't work and I don't know what I could do to try to make it work

This is my configuration:
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-2410M CPU @ 2.30 GHz
RAM: 4,00 GB
SO: Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1
Graphic Cards: Intel® HD Graphics Family - driver version 8.15.10.2509
NVIDIA GeForce GT 520M - driver version 8.17.12.8026
XBMC version: nightly build (10/21/2011) but I have the same problem with older builds

please, tell me if you need more information about my configuration.

Thank you!

you can try to start it fresh:

1. un-install xbmc in w7 control panel
2. delete all xbmc in w7 "regedit"
3. you can verify "program files" and "roaming" folders to delete all xbmc
4. re-install the stable dharma 10.1

I have exactly the same problem with my laptop, but I thought it was just me so I never bothered to "report" this.

(XBMC works just fine with my other computers. Only my laptop is giving me hard time.)

There is nothing related to this freezing logged to Windows Event Log and XBMC log wont be created if freezing happens. I tried "clean Dharma 10.1" install by uninstalling XBMC and deleting %appdata%\XBMC %ProgramFiles(x86)%\XBMC. First start of cleanly installed XBMC 10.1 freezes my laptop too. It does however create empty folders (before freezing) to %appdata%\XBMC but no log files or other files are created. The XBMC version number doesn't seem to matter, this happens with nightlies and stable.

By freezing my laptop I mean these symptoms:

- CPU fan starts screaming (high CPU usage)
- Task Manager shows XBMC.exe 32* process, size about 2000 kb, but no significiant processor usage (Task Manager propably isn't reporting anything reliable at this point)
- Task manager becomes unusable slow
- Explorer hangs
- If I manage to start shutting down the operating system, it will never completely shut down. It stays at "Shutting down..". I have to use the power button.

XBMC won't freeze my computer if I start it once IMMEDIATELY after reboot/login. After that I can start and quit XBMC just fine. I can hibernate my laptop and even after that XBMC starts fine if I wont reboot my laptop. But after reboot/login if I wait (and use normally my laptop) about 5 minutes or more and then try to start XBMC for the first time, it will freeze. XBMC is the only progran that does this freezing anomaly.

So this leads me to think that XBMC is not getting along with some background processes or drivers that gets started after a certain delay. XBMC will start and function ok if it gets started even once before them. Weird, huh?

I'm not saying that this is XBMC's fault at all. It could be (and most likely this is) some moronic background program/driver that hangs, but I'm having really hard time pinpointing this. I have no idea how to use any debugging or tracing tools. I have tried to disable ALL start-up programs and non-Microsoft services (via msconfig) and rebooting, but I haven't had any success yet. Rebooting your laptop and waiting 5 or more minutes after that to pinpoint buggy background program gets really boring after a while.

I see, that your GPU is nvidia 520M and processsor is i5-2410M, so I assume you are using laptop? Is your laptop by any chance made by HP? I'm trying to pinpoint this problem, and right now I'm blaming some HP specific backgroud programs/drivers. I used to think that ATI drivers were the ones to blame, but since you are using nvidia... This could also be Intel's fault since we both have Intel chpset and processor (your processor belongs to the same processor family with my i5-2520M).

I have checked my hard drive (chkdsk) and it's fine too. I can't blame NTFS or any other disk errors.

My system specs are:

Hardware

- Hewlett-Packard HP ProBook 6560b
- BIOS: Version 68SCE Ver. F.08 (latest)
- Processor: Intel Core i5-2520M 2.5 GHz
- Chipset: HM65, Intel Sandy Bridge
- HDD: Intel 320 series SSD / 160 Gt
- System Memory: 8 Gt (DDR3-1333 DDR3 SDRAM)
- Graphics: Radeon HD 6470M (512 MB)
- Audio: IDT 92HD81B1X @ Intel Cougar Point PCH
- Network: HP hs2340 HSPA+ Mobile Broadband Module Network Adapter
- Network: Intel® 82579V Gigabit Network Connection
- Network: Intel® Centrino® Advanced-N 6205

Software

- Windows 7 / 64 bit, all updates installed
- All drivers are up to date according to HP/Intel
- No "exotic" or even standard anti-virus programs (can't blame them this time)
- XBMC. Tried to install/uninstall several times. Tried stable 10.1 too. Version doesn't seem to matter.
- Otherwise pretty standard stuff.

If someone is interested, I have one debug log of successfull XBMC startup here: http://pastebin.com/2LzpGxqw (Note: my USB drive was unplugged so those library errors are related to that.)

something in windows must have conflict with xbmc. can you disable everything in windows msconfig startup? you can restart htpc and try to lunch xbmc afterward.

if xbmc stop freezing with everything disabled, you can try disable one thing at a time to pinpoint the route cause!

Guys - before you go reinstalling everything (possible waste of time) lets do some real basic troubleshooting...

1) Fully update all drivers & OS patches
-- video (use the latest from your hardware manuf)
-- network (get this direct from the Intel/Broadcom/etc - not from Dell/HP/etc)
-- run Windows update and install everything.
<reboot>
2) download and run CCLeaner - do a files and registry clean... several times
<reboot>
3) run XBMC in portable mode to eliminate the potential for an issue with your profile
-- this will require you install XBMC in a place where you have full read & write access
--- so uninstall XBMC, delete all folders/files for XBMC, and ensure you reinstall in a RW location... then run XBMC -p

** If you get a BSOD - look up the Stop code to see what the potential issue is.

** If the above does not solve the issue... then go the MSCONFIG route to run in Safe Mode to see if XBMC -p works then.

bluray Wrote:something in windows must have conflict with xbmc. can you disable everything in windows msconfig startup? you can restart htpc and try to lunch xbmc afterward.

if xbmc stop freezing with everything disabled, you can try disable one thing at a time to pinpoint the route cause!

Eh.. I really won't start disabling operating system services too.

Quoting myself:

paavor Wrote:I'm not saying that this is XBMC's fault at all. It could be (and most likely this is) some moronic background program/driver that hangs, but I'm having really hard time pinpointing this. I have no idea how to use any debugging or tracing tools. I have tried to disable ALL start-up programs and non-Microsoft services (via msconfig) and rebooting, but I haven't had any success yet. Rebooting your laptop and waiting 5 or more minutes after that to pinpoint buggy background program gets really boring after a while.

So I have tried to do just that - disabled all non-ms services and all start-up programs. Many times. Really many times.

For now I just use my workaround when I want to use XBMC: start XBMC immediately after reboot and login and it XBMC works as it should.

(The freezing machine is my laptop and I only use XBMC with it when I'm traveling. You know, it's kind of boring sitting in a train, waiting in hotels etc.. So the problem isn't that huge for me. My other XBMC installations/computers are working just fine.)

paavor Wrote:Eh.. I really won't start disabling operating system services too.

if you read my messages carefully, i didn't ask you to disable stuffs in "services". it's the startup stuffs. it doesn't harm anything to disable stuff in startup. you can always manually startup or re-enable it afterward. you can simply do this to find out if anything in the startup is causing xbmc to crash.

for me, i rarely enable anything during startup on more than 10 pc's both at home and work. without enabling it, it make windows startup much faster.

bluray Wrote:if you read my messages carefully, i didn't ask you to disable stuffs in "services". it's the startup stuffs.

Yes sir, but if you read my messages, I have said twice already, that I have disabled ALL startup programs and still no joy. And after that I have even disabled ALL non-microsoft services too. So there isn't anything else left to disable, but operating system services.

I'm sorry if I haven't written that clearly enough. English isn't my language and I may have lost something in translation.

(XBMC wont (naturally) start in Windows safe-mode, because graphics and audio drivers aren't loaded. Tried that too. )

To the original poster, markmaior: I don't mean to hijack your thread, but our problem seems to be similar, except that I won't get BSOD.

paavor Wrote:Yes sir, but if you read my messages, I have said twice already, that I have disabled ALL startup programs and still no joy. And after that I have even disabled ALL non-microsoft services too. So there isn't anything else left to disable, but operating system services.

sorry i didn't see anything about disabled startup in your original post #3. if you already did, there is no further discussion on it.

paavor Wrote:I'm sorry if I haven't written that clearly enough. English isn't my language and I may have lost something in translation.

your english is fine!

paavor Wrote:(XBMC wont (naturally) start in Windows safe-mode, because graphics and audio drivers aren't loaded. Tried that too. )

it's not advice. have you check your network setup or how about try to launch xbmc without network?