Bluescreen nightmare during gig

Coupe70 · Post by **Coupe70** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 12:50 pm

Hi !
I played a gig last saturday and it was a nightmare:
We had a soundcheck and everything was fine. Then
there played a band before us and I left my laptop
on (incl. Live). When it was our turn I wanted to check
if everything is fine. I only pressed play and
bang! - bluescreen ! I rebooted and we started. After
2 songs: Bang! - bluecreen ! I was lucky, because I
had 3 musicians with me so they could play something
while I rebooted. After half an hour: bang! - bluecreen !

I played the same set 3 weeks ago without any problem.
I tested the set at home about 5 hours last saturday.
Without any problem. I did not have the impression that
it was extremely hot or wet in the location...

Any ideas what that was ?

polyslax · Post by **polyslax** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 12:55 pm

Had your notebook been drinking b4 the gig?

Sorry man, no idea... Murphy's law perhaps?

rbmonosylabik · Post by **rbmonosylabik** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 12:55 pm

That's how Windows rolls

Sorry I can't input anything other than that, but sometimes these things are unpredictable. Maybe your computer didn't like something in the air or the power or who knows what.

Coupe70 · Post by **Coupe70** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 1:03 pm

are problems with the power a possible reason for
bluescreens ? if so, could an inserted battery help
(i have mine removed) ? or, if there are problems
with the power, could my motu traveller cause any
problems on the firewire port ? i did not recognise
any additional audio dropouts...

@polyslax:
no it had no drinks b4, but I had...

yourmom · Post by **yourmom** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 1:15 pm

i think you just answered your own question.

problem with your computer? what is the variable that has changed since the last time it was acting normal?

Coupe70 · Post by **Coupe70** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 1:29 pm

the drinks ? (it wasn´t me having the bluescreens)
the power ?
the room temperature ? (have played in much hotter/wetter locations)

but again: can power problems (what kind ? caused by what ?)
be a reason for bluescreens ?

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 1:38 pm

DEFINITELY put that battery back in, at least then if the club power goes a bit wonky (very common btw) the laptop will just rely on the battery to regulate things. Also make sure it's not too hot during the gig by getting something like cool feet from cableyoyo.com. Some people have had issues with too much bass making the laptop act up, my guess is that it affects the HD reading.

serotoninsteve · Post by **serotoninsteve** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 1:52 pm

What you could do is,
uncheck under systemeigenschaften/erweitert/startenwiederherstellen "automatisch neustart durchführen" and try to reproduce the BS.
When it happens the dll's wich caused the crash should be listet (and stay as it doesn't reboot automatically).
Check what caused the problem, something like usbblabla.dll perhaps?
Was that the first time you ran without the battery?
If yes, then the (perhaps unstable) power source on stage could be the problem.
What was connected?

Macrostructure · Post by **Macrostructure** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 1:58 pm

make a list of everything that was different from the last time you ran successfully. then eliminate them one by one.

what was the bluescreen message by the way?

Coupe70 · Post by **Coupe70** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 2:32 pm

i run this laptop without battery because i usually dont
need it - i carry my laptop around, but use it only near
a power socket. haven´t thought about putting it back
in. but there seems to be a good reason to do so...

as i said, i don´t think that heat was the problem.
and there was very little vibration caused by bass...which is sad....

there was no very high load on the cpu in the moments
the bluescreens appeared.

reboot is already disabled, but i didn´t take the time to
read, because i was in the middle of a gig. as far as i remember
it said the usual stuff and at the bottom STOP and a hex number.

debug information is set to small memory dump (64KB).
Should I change it ? There was a memory dump written for
at least one bluescreen. is there something i can read out of
it ? looks weird...

what do you mean by "what was connected?" ?
to the power ? well, it was in an old storage house (no club),
lights connected seperately from all the rest.
or to my laptop ?
one USB-HD, one Motu Traveller via Firewire and a Behringer
BCR 2000 via USB.

what more can i say...?

Dominik · Post by **Dominik** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 2:47 pm

i had blue screens on my desktop 2 weeks ago.
it was the graphic card.

serotoninsteve · Post by **serotoninsteve** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 6:21 pm

Yes,
I meant what gear was connected,
as I had a terratec usb26 soundcard some time ago and got BS to,
without changing anything.
In the end it was the usb driver, reinstalled it and worked afterwards.
Try to reproduce it and come back with the faulty files,
or google around what they do and how they could be the case.
And for sure I would never go on stage without a battery,
that's the chance you have using a laptop when the power goes down one time!

Nod · Post by **Nod** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 6:54 pm

Coupe70 wrote:are problems with the power a possible reason for
bluescreens ?

Can be - power management in clubs is notoriously shite and one good spike down the line might not drop a power amp but would stop a laptop dead in it's tracks - Mac or PC. As with any piece of kit that goes gigging it's worthwhile having both a power conditioner and an APS for those moments when it does go wrong - and it will go wrong

Then again it could be something like bad RAM, botched installations...always keep a 'ghost' image of a solid, working, gig only config.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 6:59 pm

what the others said... also, clean the vents on your laptop, hoover the fans and such as best you can.

And yes, I've seen a monolake show end *very* abruptly because his powerbook overheated... stuff like this happens.

Recently (well, not too recently) I did an open laptop night. My shit worked well... in rehearsal. When we hit play to start our 20 minutes 50% of the rig didn't work at all... silence. eek. Cool gig, nonetheless.

splonge · Post by **splonge** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:04 pm

It could be something has worked its way loose on your laptop, either a memory DIMM or your hard drive. When I was still doing live webcasts to pay back some karmic debt I clearly owed, the most common cause of intermittent problems and specifically blue screens with a system/PC that was working fine would be something coming loose.

So the first pass would be to re-seat everything, assuming you don't mind taking your laptop apart a bit.

This all of course assumes that nothing in the software has changed, such as a driver update or software update between the working and not-working states.