Flex Lockup on 1.10.16

Michael Aust

Still on 1.9.13 here, refuse to go to 1.10.16 after many lockups with it

tired of this game

NM1W

While the new rigs are nice, I'm waiting to hear if the dax corruption and rig crashes have been resolved.. So far I'm assuming NO given the lack of comments from Flex...

James Skala

I would hope that they're not selling those new radios with the same bugs

Frederic HB9CQK

Question to Michael Aust: Did you downgrade from 1.10.16 to 1.9.13 and the lockups were gone? I did not have any lockups with 1.9.13. I think the fact that 1.9.13 did not have lockups is very important for bug fixing and it seems that this point got a bit lost amongst all the discussion about USB, Dimension 4, Windows Updates, etc. If you confirm I will be happy to downgrade, because I do not really need the added functionality of 1.10.16.
Thanks and 73, Frédéric, HB9CQK

Michael Aust

I did not have any Lockup's with 1.9.13 on my Flex6700 but when I went to 1.10.16, 
within a few days I get lockups and other issues !

Got fed up with it !

73 Mike

Frederic HB9CQK

Thank you very much Mike! This confirms my observation. I will do a downgrade and keep my fingers crossed that FRS gets this sorted out soon.
73, Frédéric, HB9CQK

Gerald-K5SDR

Our engineers are taking the lock up problem seriously but the have been unable to recreate it in the lab so far. The incidence rate relative to the total installed base is quite small. They are working directly with some customers to monitor their systems. So far the have not been able to capture a failure incidence. We will keep working it till we get it resolved. If you are having the problem, you have the option to go back a revision.

Jerry WA9UKB

This might be a handy item to have , not sure of cost or availability. Jerry, http://www.digital-loggers.com/din.html

Frederic HB9CQK

Thanks for that info Gerald. I was going to downgrade, but I am willing to help. My 6700 locks up (needs long power button press to recover) approx. twice to three times a week when I run 24/7. No USB attached, Windows 10 Home with latest updates, i7-7700K CPU, 32 GB, 64-Bit, 7 instances of JTDX, DXKeeper, Commander, JTAlert and NetTime.

David Orman

Gerald: have you attempted intentionally skewing the PC clock to be slightly incorrect, then using Dimension 4 to slew it back in sync with NTP? In both directions (forward/backward). D4 may be a red herring, as some people notice the issue without it, but it could just be the people who noticed the issue without it had the Windows NTP sync occur (which is very infrequent, whereas the D4 sync is more frequent).

I'm wondering if you're running into a NTP/time slew/sync correction issue causing the hangs, I've seen that fairly often, especially as some of the newer software is doing a slew to combat leap second vs. straight corrections.

Also, perhaps try to get NTP logs from people who experienced crashes, and see if syncs happened around the same time as the crashes themselves. I'm not a Windows guy, nor do I know D4, so I don't know how to tell you to get the logs for the built in NTP and D4 NTP services.

Terry K7NY

Where do u find Windows NTP in 8.1?
K7NY
Terry

Terry K7NY

I found it.

Rick W7YP

I've done 3 factory resets but the freeze still occurs.

Tom Warren

I've just experienced another (my 2nd) lockup. Flex 6300 w/1.10.16 update, Win7Pro. Long power button press restored it to normal operation. As before my last lockup which I posted earlier, the radio was in Rx mode and had been on for a little over 3 hours.  W4TMW

David Orman

Hi Tom, since this just happened, if you are using Windows with D4/another NTP client, can you please hit the windows key, then type 'event', which should let you open event viewer. Open it up, and select "System" under "Windows logs" in the upper left. Then, on the right pane, click "Filter current log". Leave everything as is, except select "Time Server" in the "Event Sources" drop down. Accept that dialog, and look starting at the top. Here's an image of what that looks like:



See if there was a time sync around the time you had an issue. If you're using another NTP service, try to find the logs for it and see if that occurred.

W4TMW

David, I'm afraid I will not be able to help at this time....just too many things going on now. I'm also having another issue (happened yesterday too) w/6300 losing my SSDR CAT setups. I'm left with the default settings)I suspect a corrupt file.

Greg - KØGDI

I've been having this problem consistently for a while now.  Hoping beyond hope that 2.0 fixes this as it wouldn't be ideal to remote a radio that is freezing up.  Guess will have to wait for the June release of 2.0.

David Orman

No worries, hopefully someone else can do the same. It may be completely unrelated, but worth looking into.

Jerry WA9UKB

My 6500 last night with the Maestro, after I booted up the computer using DAX. Mine might be an anomaly though.

Steve Gw0gei

My understanding is that 2.0 release may not include a fix for this issue, and there will be one or two 1.10 maintenance releases after 2.0 i.e. After the end of June - this info is from Gerald's post in another thread. I think I am going to try a complete removal and fresh install on my few months old w10 pc as it also had a dax driver corruption fault arise this week.

Tim - W4TME

If we have determined root cause for the issue, it will be fixed and distributed to all major release versions.

Paul M

I was having crashes a number of times a day sometimes in fact I was one of the first to post about the issue.  About a month and a half ago I made two changes that Tim recommended.  First was to change from Dimension 4 to NTP Time and second was to move the port number of the flex control up to the 200 range of the COM ports.   Since that time I have only had two stops, both on required the simple push of the on/off button.  I have not had a radio freeze since the change.  

I still have an issue where the USB ports on the Flex sometimes will loose sync with the peripherals.  The worst is the SteppIR controller but the SPE 2KFA has had a few failures, also.  The only way I have found to get the band change back working is to disable/enable the USB port on the Flex. This works about 95% of the time.  The other 5% require the radio to be turned off and the relaunch of the software.  Just relaunching  the software will not solve the problem. 

NM1W

Paul - interesting; I've always had my FlexControl connected to DDUTIL,  though it is on COM3; I also have always used Meinberg NTP.  I still get the crashes, even after the two button reset. 

Paul M

I was getting an error window related to the Flex Control on soft stops, stops where all I had to do was restart the radio with a normal push.  Since I changed the port to about 200 I have not had the error but have had two radio stops without and error window.  As i said no lockups and I was twice to three times a day at one time.  I do Run Windows 7 and I have updated to the latest releases as they come out.   

Steve Gw0gei

Thanks for that confirmation Tim. I sort of assumed that the problem has still not been narrowed down. I know it's difficult with an issue that appears random but hopefully it will be found and at least a beta fix released so that those of us suffering the issue can help a bit more by trying the beta fix to give you more data or confirm that it fixes it.

Rick W7YP

My 6700 crashed again during the night after nearly 4 days running 24/7.  I've run much longer with only one panadapter containing one slice receiver and never crashed once; however, my standard configuration now is two panadapters, the first with one slice receiver on one of the HF bands and the second panadapter having four slice receivers monitoring our four primary VHF repeaters.  It was only after going to two panadapters that I began noticing the crashes.  Has anyone been experiencing the crashes with only one panadapter and one slice receiver?

Following this crash, I tried the short push on the on/off button and waited patiently.  After slightly less than a minute, the radio shut down.  When I turned it on again, the HF panadapter was on a different band than I'd left it on and its single slice receiver was gone.  When I added one to it, all seemed well until I changed bands to return to 30m where I'd previously left it.  When I did that, all but one of the slice receivers on the 2m panadapter disappeared and the one that remained went to 30m as well and to the same frequency as the slice receiver in the first panadapter. 

Re-importing my saved configuration seemed to make everything well again.

When I purchased my 6700, it was with the intention of also operating it remotely.  Obviously that's an impossibility as long as this problem remains.  Currently I have a $7500 radio that I can't operate remotely and my wife's $1400 Icom IC-7300 that I can.

I suspect that most if not all of 6000 series owners who haven't seen this problem simply haven't been running their radios long enough.  If FlexRadio truly can't reproduce this problem in their lab, then it's probably time for them to give one of us a new radio in exchange for ours and then run it as we did in their lab.

As someone who's spent years as an EE designing and developing embedded systems, I know that problems like this can be difficult to reproduce and fix; however, I've never seen one that dragged on this long without resolution and that was even involving products costing far less than these radios.

Rick, W7YP

NM1W

6700 crash; required long push; tone is present. "smartsdr has lost......" rig had been on about 3 hours. Pretty much same as the previous crashes I've reported.

NM1W

Rick on my 6700 I run 8 pans, 8 slices; after a crash the 8 pans usually come back, but the slices are a random number, randomly distributed; and the daxiq settings are randomized.

Bill W2PKY

Rick-
I have experienced crashes after many days of 24X7 operation as well. Never had a radio crash until installing 1.10.16 .. Find it interesting that re-importing your profiles fixed the panadapter presentation problems; you obviously know what that means.
I am trying a new install method; Downgrade the radio to 1.9.13, then power down. Start SSDR 1.10.16 and bring the radio up with the two button reboot. This will have the radio at factory reset condition. upgrade to 1.10.16 with no profiles in the radio. Then re-import the profiles.  Will see what happens.

Jim Runge

6700 on ssb monitor for 20 minutes had lockup with tone. Windows 10 with updates. One slice and wooden box S meter running. SPE 2k on and hooked up via usb.