Weather Watcher (5.6.23) keeps having problems downloading weather updates. It appears that DL.exe periodically just locks up and stops responding. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to it. Sometimes Weather Watcher will have been running only an hour or two; other times for a day or two. But when it quits downloading updates, it is always the same. DL.exe is showing up in the task manager; the weather watcher main screen is showing one bar out of the four in the progress bar that shows up when weather is being downloaded; and it is just stuck. At that point, the only thing that works is to shut down Weather Watcher, kill DL.exe through task manager, then restart Weather Watcher.
Can you make this system a bit more robust so it will handle these problems with DL.exe; or use something else that is more stable to download the weather data?? It is such a pain to have to kill everything and restart it (sometimes several times a day). At this point, Weather Watcher is not really that reliable for me as I don’t know if it is updating or not and whether it is showing current weather or something hours old because DL.exe has locked up yet again.
I have tried completely uninstalling Weather Watcher and reinstalling form scratch; but the problems with DL.exe seem to still be there.
No, DL.exe is using no CPU time at all when it locks up. I’ve left it like that for a while, and coming back much later the CPU time and memory usage are exactly the same as when I checked after it initially locked up. So it looks like it is just sitting there doing nothing at all.
And I’ve got WW set to auto update only every 15 minutes.
When DL hangs can you kill it with Task Manager while WW is up? And if so can you then click on the WW update button and does it then update?
Do you have any other online apps running that may tie up the network periodically? And lets us not forget the auto update checks by Windows, antibirus apps, antispyware apps, Real, Quicktimes, WMP, etc. Are you running iTunes?
I have had the same issue, sometimes just restarting the computer releases it, other times it locks right back up. I tried updating, and it would not allow DL to be deleted automatically (I finally got it) it will hang if nothing else is running or if other things are running. I am running Windows Vista (trying to find a common issue)
when I had the problem this last time, stopping DL did not help so I closed and restarted WW, and when I did I got an error message. It shows everything that was running at the time. I was using the sidebar ones because I wasn’t sure when WW would update http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v257/archemedes/weatherwatcher.jpg
Still hangs, and even stopping DL doesn’t help it retrieve updates. I have to restart my whole system to get it to work, and even then it doesn’t always help.
weird. I am assuming you’ve checked your firewall to make sure it is allowed access (assuming you’re running a firewall)…and scanned the file itself to make sure it hasn’t somehow become infected with Malware…And checked that you don’t have any system protection blocking access to weather.com / singerscreations.com for download access (I think it only needs access to weather.com, but not 100% sure).
Now, since it is just ‘locked up’ it seems something externally is blocking the file from downloading the weather it needs - however, since I am running it here as well I know it is not the file itself…
How often do you have it set to download? Perhaps your IP is being blocked for accessing the weather server too many times?
I have noticed that some times, (usually overnight) my weather will have stopped downloading- and usually it is fixed when I either manually perform a download, or restart the program.
Do you have WW set to not update when in screen saver mode?
Do you have your machine or its hd configured to shutdown if unused for an extended period of time?
Mine doesn’t update when my nb is hibernating. But I have WW configured such that a dbl click on it’s System Tray icon invokes an update of data, so restarting WW is a simple task.
for me, yes - but I should have clarified that by saying if I have been on the computer for several hours I will notice sometimes that it stops working - without screensaver / desktop locking having been enabled.
No, my machine is on 24/7/365, except for reboots cause by Windows Update and manual reboots when I install software.
I set it so that single click opens WW and dbl-cl opens options. I can usually force it to update, but even then, I’ll notice that it won’t keep updating, as if the options to auto update have gotten ‘lost’ somehow - but the options are still set.
I get one dl.exe running at 264k and every so often can get a second occurance to open, but usually it’s just the one. When vista starts I get nothing except the security warning telling me I don’t have it set to disable everything, and am not using their spyware
I got some free time and decided to see if I could find any cause for DL.EXE locking up as I have not been using WW because of that issue and miss it.
I could not find any specific pattern or cause of it locking up; but I did find more issues it raises when it does lock up. First, when DL.EXE is locked up, it causes an issue with hyperlinks opening the browser. I tried clicking a link in my e-mail app, and nothing happened whereas my browser would usually open and naviatae to the indicated page. The second I use task manager to close the locked up DL.exe, the browser opens and navigates to the page. I’ve tried this numerous times, sometimes waiting for several minutes between clicking the hyperlink and closing DL.EXE. Every single time when I close DL.EXE, everything returns to normal functionaliity. And I don’t have to click the link again… I can click the link, wait any amount of time, and the instant I close DL.EXE, the browser opens and navigates to the page without any additional clicks on the link; so it is definitely DL.EXE that is causing the issue. And it works from other apps besides my email too… viewing a PDF file in Acrobat, links behave the same way with DL.EXE locked up.
The other issue I encountered is that I cannot hibernate the computer with DL.EXE locked up. When I try to hibernate the computer, nothing happens if DL.EXE is locked up… but the instant I close DL.EXE, the computer hibernates… once again without taking any further action like selecting hibernate again.
So DL.EXE is still causing such great issues that I’ve had no choice but to do without Weather Watcher. Hopefully, you can find the problem with it or develop some alternative to it as I miss being able to use it.
