[techguru]

the may monthly works..it what im running now

if any devs wanna test it out and see the problem...I will Install teamviewer on the xp machine and then you can login and check it out

contact gogeta at gmail

[petergebruers]

Regarding http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/14408 referring to the thread http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=166558 (this thread)

I can confirm that on my XP SP3 laptop from 2005 all recent nightlies are very slow (unusable) and can't always be killed.

I know, I need a new PC. Or Mac. Or Linux. But actually I like XP (and dislike windows 8)

I can also confirm that "xbmc-13.0-Gotham_alpha4.exe" is a version that works on my old laptop.

I'd like to help. But it makes my PC hang so hard I need to push the power button. So I thought: what if I could reproduce this in a virtual machine?

This is what I tried: Install XP SP3 (dutch) in Virtualbox 4.2.16.

Enable directx3d support by installing this option in guest additions (boot guest in safe mode, install guest additions)

Increase guest video memory to 128 MB and enable 3D and 2D acceleration.

Install "xbmc-13.0-Gotham_alpha4.exe" and connect to a Synology UPNP share. Works as expected.

Install "XBMCSetup-20130819-0efa87e-3127.exe": symptoms as described by original poster. Extremely slow/unresponsive.

So, now I can test a bit more "freely". But what is the next step? All hints welcome. I'll try to "read" the change set that caused the issue, but I am not an expert programmer.

[Martijn]

Notice:
for the one who are using XP i suggest you stick with Frodo or start looking for a newer windows version
amongst one of the reasons
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/e...pport.aspx
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/windows-xp-m...-1872.html

[petergebruers]

I'll try it anyway, just for fun.

I use XBMC mainly on an android box and an android tablet.

I am still using XP on three (!) PC's. When they break... it's "game over" for windows

I just like browsing the code of this project

But thanks for your subtle way of telling me that I am wasting my time on this

[petergebruers]

I was able to build and test XBMC in my virtual environment. With sources from yesterday, the problem is still there. I have been stepping through pieces of code to get an idea of the different parts. I have not yet checked the commits that where posted a bit earlier on in this thread. But I have been thinking... WaitForSingleObject is used for syncing. On XP, this has the potential of deadlocking the windows message loop which is exactly what this problem looks like (when dwMilliseconds is set to INFINITE, that is...). See http://marc.durdin.net/2012/08/waitforsi...hould.html for an example. It is nothing more than a wild guess though. I'l first go through the list of suspected commits.

[petergebruers]

I saw this on github: "jimfcarroll opened this pull request 5 days ago" "Remove the Xp specific threading code." https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/3145.

So I will not be working on this any longer. But it was VERY interesting stuff to debug. I actually got as far as a reasonably working UI (very slow, blocks for several seconds). I think Jim has a point when he talks about the subtleties of the various treads interacting with the windows OS (e.g. "SleepConditionVariableCS, This critical section must be entered exactly once").

As I said, great fun to debug

[stupid-boy]

as XP is abandoned already, and if you still are interested from this problem, here is the problem:
https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/commit/df90...57fb2f6fe5
this fix is applicable only for vista+. as Jim say, 'but at the cost of ditching Xp'. if you revert this fix, you will have back perfectly working XBMC on XP.
it wait in CEvent, and actual point where this delay is reflecting is in jobs.

and, actually not so easy to debug to as low level as to this point.

that information is only for fun, without temptations to get back XP.

[petergebruers]

Tnx stupid-buy. Aha.... "Condition.h" is the file I was messing with too, but for other reasons (and on XP). I replaced WaitForSingleObject with MsgWaitForMultipleObjects. And I changed some infinite wait times with 5000 ms. Great reading stuff all this! No, I don't find this easy to debug. But it is 100% sublime fun! I guess it is a bit like playing chess, trying to imagine what all the locks are, what all these treads are supposed to do, etcetera. No "temptations to get back XP" here either

I have Minix Neo X5 hooked up to my TV. It runs XBMC, of course. I cannot imagine ANY reason why I would want to replace that Android box with a device that runs Microsoft Windows. No, you'd have to torture me to run a windows multimedia device. So... like you said... This information too is only for fun

[jjd-uk]

XP is a 12 year old operating system that none of the Team use, even Vista which will be the minimum going forward is 7 years old, besides XP is stone age from a media handling point of view with Vista & later being having much better audio & video API's.

Compared with Ubuntu which requires 11.10 and OS-X that requires 10.6 both of which had 2011 release, Windows users have had it easy in not having to upgrade to run the latest XBMC versions.

[petergebruers]

"Amen!" to that