Is anyone else still having issues after upgrading to 1.11

Paul M

I upgraded to 1.11 on the release day and ran for ~36 hours without issue.   Yesterday I had three sudden quit where the banner indicated lost communications.   Two required a long push to quit and one just required a normal quit.  If I am the sole one remaining who is still having issues I wonder if I have a hardware issue that is masking itself as a software issue.

The operating condition is direct to the computer with no internet access.  No other programs installed on the i5 running Windows 10 up to date as of five days ago.

Paul -W4PGM

Mike NN9DD

I am running Finn on the 6300 with W10 Mike NN9DD

N6OIL

Ditto on what Mike said, running on a Dell T3600 16gb ram 1TB SCSI Xeon 3.2GHz 6 cores and no issues at all.

Cal N3CAL

I've been running new release (1.11.12) since release on Monday 24/7 without any issues.  Zero packet loss reported so far.  Running on a Win 10 Machine as well.

Cal/N3CAL

KM4OVH

I am going to recommend you try something that I learned the hard way during 27 years of supporting computer systems.
Have you tried a different network cable between the radio and computer?
Does the network cable run near any other equipment that could be introducing problems?
If possible try a different computer.
I wasted a lot of time in my computer career tracking down problems that in the end were solved by replacing bad cables or cable ends, or just rerouting away from possible interference.

Paul M

Andre - Thanks for the reply.  in order:

Yes - 3- CAT 6 and 2- CAT 7.  Different lengths and different companies.
It goes from the back of the radio to the computer.  Nothing else between or near.
I have tried 5 different computers; 3 desktops, 2 laptops.   This one is a never used  i5 desktop left over from a project at the office.   It is only running windows.  Nothing else, no time sync, no HRD, no Office, no mail and no internet.

Also,  I have put the power supply on the bench an checked it out for lag and ripple and it is fine. While on the bench I ran the radio from a new Alinco 330 switcher and still had crashes.  The power in the radio room is on it's own 50AMP breaker and sub-panel. Total house draw is 48 amps nominal.  The computer is on a pure sine-wave UPS but it fails on or off conditioned power. 

Lastly, the radio crashes most of the time (99.9%) in receive; many time after being up for hours just receiving.

Today I move the computer to my home office room and put the radio on a QOS hub.  
I had a crash both before and after the move.

Any other things that you can think of I am glad to try but I think it may have to go back to MECCA for a checkout.  I am out of things to try.

Thanks again.

Paul - W4PGM

Steve Jones gw0gei

Since upgrading to 1.11 last Monday all seemed fine on rx and tx after upgrade, including during a 180 mins 80m ssb contest on Monday evening. Left my 6300 on since then and was fine until this morning when I left it on rx after working an 80m local net on ssb. I did some gardening afterwards and when I came into the shack a few hours later I found the radio had disconnected itself and was not showing in the radios available window. A single touch on the off button of the 6300 did not work, so I pulled the power supply off it for 30 mins whilst I had lunch. Powered back on after lunch and booted up as usual - now left it running on 20m cw rx to see if it happens again over rest of this weekend. Disappointed as am planning on doing multi two from home in cqww ssb and cw legs with friends and will have to fal back on my new ic7300 to run alongside a k3 if the random crashing problem is still a problem by them.

Short answer, no you are not alone!  6300 here is connected to an old  network switch in the shack along with the main radio contesting i5 w10 pc and an i3 w7 laptop for day to day logging. Fed by cat 5 from the bt router hub downstairs. No wifi in use and full green bars with no reported packet losses.
Steve GW0GEI / GW9J 

Paul M

Steve - I'm not sure if I am happy that I am not the only one or sad for the same reason.   Thanks for the update.  My e-mail is good on QRZ if you want to share symptoms offline.    

Thanks again,

Paul W4PGM

Jon_KF2E

Paul,

I would hold off sending it back to Flex if you can. I shipped mine back a month ago today and still don't have an estimate for getting it back.

Jon...kf2e

Bill -VA3WTB

Paul,,  how did things go when you worked with Flex over the help desk?

Alan C

Maybe not the issue, but check "power management' tab of your Network Interface device/properties in control panel/device manager. Make sure the box 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power' is not checked...

Another Oops by Microsoft: right click on your hard drive and go to 'properties'. Click on the tools tab. Click on Optimize. You will find that it defaults to ON. You don't want this. Check Scheduled Optimization and turn that OFF. With Optimize (defragment) running, it slows the computer profoundly.

You'll find that the file system used by Windows 10 (NTFS) - does not need defragmenting. The older operating systems used **** file system, and did require some defraging.

My .02

Alan

Kevin

Excellent tip! I have SSD drives which I understand are not supposed to be optimized all that often if ever (something about limited read-write cycles). All my drives including external drives were being optimized. 

I like Win10 but I wonder how many more "optimizations" are performed by default that affect performance. I'm also concerned with the way Microsoft seems to not care about re-enabling things I disable. Not a fact, just a feeling.

73,
Kev K4VD

Paul M

Thanks, Ala.  Both were set correctly.

Paul - W4PGM

Bill -VA3WTB

Paul, have you contacted the help desk?

Paul M

Bill - No; I purposely wanted to know if I was the only one having issues or if there were others.  If it was just me then sending the unit in made sense; with others having the same issue I am at a loss as to how to proceed.   

In the past Tim put logging software on my system for one cycle of the quit and reboot.   He said there was nothing significant from that data since the kernel crashed before it logged an error.  My symptoms have not changed from the 1.10.16 release, albeit less often than in the past, so I am not sure what they can do for me at this point except keep looking for the issue. 

Thanks to all for the recommendations.  Please keep them coming as I am willing to try anything to get a stable system.

Paul - W4PGM

Tim - W4TME

Steve, so you have only had one incident of a crash in over a week?  Is that correct?

Tim - W4TME

Paul, Please open a new HelpDesk ticket now that you are running 1.11.12

Peter K1PGV

Sorry: NTFS absolutely does need periodic defragmenting. Absolutely. Peter K1PGV

Paul M

Tim - Traveling this week. Will call you when I get back to discuss.

Paul -W4PGM

Tim - W4TME

Paul - FYI.  I'll be OOO from Thursday through Monday.

Steve Gw0gei

Yes çorrect Tim. Since it crashed on Saturday morning (had been on only a couple of hours as I had been away for a few days) it has been up and running on 20m and 80m. I will leave it on now to see if it happens again - running over 48hrs now since the crash (which happened on rx only). But I had been eight weeks without a crash on 1.10.160 prior to upgrading last Monday. When I did the upgrade the previous versions were not deleted and I followed the upgrade guidance to the letter (as usual).

Alan C

NTFS does not need defraging for SSD's. And for other drives, it surely doesn't need it weekly (as the default is)

Peter K1PGV

NTFS does not need defraging for SSD's. And for other drives, it surely doesn't need it weekly (as the default is)

With all due respect: Windows does not generally defrag SSDs (though it will in extreme cases). It most typically "optimizes" them by issuing trim/retrim commands.  This needs done periodically and by default is done weekly. I believe this started back in, oh, Windows Vista, I think.

Whether your rotating media (NTFS or otherwise) needs defragged weekly or not depends on the activity on the media.  Defragging rotating media weekly causes no harm, and may do some good on certain systems.

Bottom line: Like most things, Windows is smarter than most people give it credit for.  As long as you're running a version of Windows that's SSD aware (as I said, I believe this is Windows Vista), I would advise you to leave the default settings alone unless you're sure you know what you're doing.

Peter
K1PGV

Alan C

OK, Peter. You win.

I haven't defragged my HD in two years and it is at 3% fragmentation.

GM4WCE

I have experienced a loss of connectivity several times since going to v1.11.  I noticed that from time to time the network quality indicator would go yellow, then red, then back to yellow and finally green again.  The network diagnostics showed that this was a latency issue which was up to 278 the last time the radio disconnected.  The radio then needed the power cycling before it would connect again.  Gone back to v1.10, and all is OK with no issues at all.  Radio is 6300, PC i5 Win 10 with 16GB RAM.  I am not concerned as v1.10 works great for me but thought I would mention as others seem to having the same issue.
Peter GM4WCE

Steve Jones gw0gei

Peter, how is your 6300 connected to the pc? Direct via cable, via a switch?, or is your pc connected to your network via wifi? I am all hard wired and dont see anything other than full green bars all of the time with no packet loss. Regards Steve gw0gei / gw9j

GM4WCE

Hi Steve, my 6300 is connected to a switch and the PC is connected to the same switch.

Tim - W4TME

Thanks for the clarification.

Rick Ciotti W3DIY

Maestro wired directly to the 6500 with a gigabit switch in line.
After the update sometimes the radio is not displayed at power up. A few times the Maestro has defaulted to the radio page but the radio is not there. Could not power off, had to **** the PS to reboot. No issues like this prior to the update.

Steve Jones gw0gei

Same as my set up then. I did have an issue with 1.10 that sounds the same and i traced it to some sort of conflict with the desktop app of my antennas genius switch. I had droppinf connectivty and then crashes despite reinstalling antenna genius app twice afresh. I ended up doing a full fresh install of ssdr and that worked and no problems for lastvtwo months on 1.10. My 6300 has been on rx since its first crash on 1.11 last saturday and did another 180min rsgb cw contest with it this eveninf with no issues. Am leaving it on to see if it stays stable. Your issue sounds similar to the one i had before on 1.10 so might be worth trying a fresh install of ssdr? 73 Steve Gw0gei / gw9j

Steve Jones gw0gei

That sounds similar to the one crash i have had on 1.11 at the weekend as i had to pull the power off to get the 6300 to reboot. Its been ok since doinf that on Saturday lunchtime