Great program but I am having a problem with the latest version. Anyone else experience this?
After WW V5.6.20a has been running for a while (have not been able to pin this down to an exact length of time) I notice excessive CPU usage. When I check this in the Task Manager I find the WW.exe is using 50+% CPU. I open WW and it is stuck at downloading an up date. Sometimes DL.exe is running and not responding but not always.
This is a new install WinXP and WW. I used an older version of WW on my previous (3 yr old) WinXP install and had no problems.
System: Windows XP Pro
CPU - P4 2.8G
RAM - 1G
HD - 320GB
I will try to uninstall and go back to an older version for a test…
PS… Sent this as a bug report a few days ago but heard nothing… It may have got lost in the bit bucket… :iconbiggrin:
Casey, I did not receive your Bug Report :neutral:
Can you snap a screenshot and send it to me i[/i] the next time Weather Watcher gets stuck (or post it here if you can)? I’m interested in seeing a screenshot that shows the main Weather Watcher window and the status window.
After sending this report I went back to using WW v.5619A and no longer had the problem.
This evening, I uninstalled v.5619A and installed v.5620A. shortly after this I had the same CPU usage problem. I reported, the last time, some times this occurred during the weather update. A couple of times dl.exe was left running and not responding… had to kill the process in the task Manager. This time there was no sign of the weather download being involved.
This time, after having the problem. I shut WW down and restarted it. Since then, (several hours) I have had no problem yet. I have not been able to make the program misbehave.
As for screenshots, I was able to make this one that shows the high CPU usage, in the Task Manager and in the Tray. I know this does not show any information other than that it was happening.
After several hours, I again found WW was causing excessive CPU usage. This time it seemed to be hung up trying to do a weather download and I was able to get a screenshot.
I later found that DL.exe was still running long after I had shut down WW. When I try to shut it down (kill the process) I got the windows, Process Not Responding message box, followed by DL.exe ending with no further problem.
Casey, what is WW’s Update Rate set to? If too low, ie Every Minute, and weather.com is backed up I believe WW starts to choke on DL.exes as they become backlogged waiting for weather.com.
I agree it’s rare on cable connections, I’ve only seen it happen once I think (and my Update Rate is 20 minutes) and I don’t think it was caused by something on my network, though certainly a possibility, or the cable service, though also a possibility, I always suspected the problem was at the weather.com end since I have encountered problems there periodically. Had one just recently where WW wouldn’t update and I couldn’t get to weather.com using the WW link to it. I waited 10 minutes and things were back to normal.
But if the weather.com access drops at a certain point, DL.exe hangs, and WW keeps initiating new DL requests. If WW would ensure a DL completes, or that there is no DL executing, before invoking a new request would help but forcing DL to timeout and end after 57 seconds I think would be better.
EdP, DL currently times out after 60-seconds. It’s supposed to anyhow… I’m not sure why it hangs for some people :neutral:
It might not be hanging at all though. Perhaps the auto update is set to 1-minute and DL keeps respawning every minute – making it seem like it is hanging open.
I thought someone reported that Task Manager showed multiple iterations of DL.exe when the usage was high.
If WW can trigger a DL.exe every 60 seconds and DL.exe is suppose to time out in 60 seconds there is the possibility that the WW’s function can sometimes beat the DL’s function based on their task priorities. Setting the DL’s time out to something less that 60 should prevent this from being a possibility. Or limit the WW maximum Update Rate to 2 minutes.
Yes, but I don’t know that too many people have the interval set to 1 minute. I don’t think Weather Watcher will attempt to retrieve the weather again when it’s in the process of retrieving the weather. I’d have to check the code to be sure, but I believe that’s how I set it up.
It seems Weather Watcher is getting stuck in a loop somewhere in the cases where WW.EXE is using the CPU for an extended period of time. I haven’t been able to recreate the situation on my computer, so I don’t have an answer… just a bunch of assumptions :neutral:
Well, suppose it’s only 5% of the install base with a Update Rate of 1 minutes. That’s still a lot of users. And out of the group suppose only 5% experience the problem.
Maybe it only occurs when someone manually clicks for an Update while DL is still running.
I have a 5mb ADSL internet connection with excellent download speeds.
I have auto updates set for every 20 min.
Auto retry, when an update fails, is disabled though I did have had it ticked before. I decided that every min was too often for retries. Maybe it would be better to change that option to 5min instead of retrying every minute. This would get away from being too close to the 60 sec. time out.
I have not been able find a pattern to when the problem occurs. WW often will run fine for hours. It happens very randomly… Everything else is working fine on my system…
My car has speedometer showing 240KM/h. Tachometer shows 8000 RPM. It does NOT mean that I HAVE or CAN drive that fast.
Same with WW. Mike allowed weather update every minute. Why? Weather site his program downloads weather status from updates weather conditions every HOUR! So what is the point to download every minute? Duh?!
I keep setting at 45 minutes and NEVER ever had ANY kind of problems with CPU usage.
FWIW: I experienced high CPU usage yesterday, for the 1st time, with a manually invoked update that when it finally finished included an alert. Maybe alerts are the cause of the problem??
Updates normally take a second or so but that one took at least a minute to complete. I thought the system was hung and Task Manager showed WW in the 45% range.
I’ve been having the same sort of problem with high CPU usage with version 5.6.21. I had my updates set to every 15 minutes, but had it keep trying every minute if the update isn’t successful. I’ve turned off that option hoping that will fix things.
I will also try the version you posted of 5.6.21a and see what happens.
Well, I installed 5621A and it was running the 10 to 20% range for a
few minutes then settled down to almost nothing. It is set to run a
local radar loop and refresh every 5 minutes. This HP machine is less
than 6 months old and has a gig of ram. XP SP2.
