Another Win7 startup frustration

[skybolt]

I've tried to find all the reports of issues and resolutions to starting HS with Win7, but I haven't seen this one yet. Sorry if it's come up before.

Win 7 Starter, 32 bit.
UAC is disabled. There are no pop-ups when starting HS. ...

I too have alot of issues with Comm Port init.
I have some plugins I wrote and have to wait for Hardware init to complete.
As you state, the OS needs time to init all of the hardware.
I was able to write the delay in to the plug-in, but this should not have to be done.

Win 7 - can't be compaired to Vista (universes better), but can't be compaired to XP Pro either (universes apart) ...

[Pete]

Thanks Mike.

Was playing a bit with the W2011 build last night (this morning). This build basically has the same OS base as previous with the W7 tweaks on it. Initially built a core with newly installed V44 HSPro. I then added the plugins and my additional scripts. Attached initially hardware wise is just the USB hub to W2C and the two Digi Edgeports.

I have the W2011 auto logging in the administrator to the desktop. Starting HS initially to the web browser. It seems to boot up fast. I then did an import from the working database. Maybe I clicking things here or there a bit too fast but it wiped the base INI web html ports. So I put them back in. I do have the W2011 web server off and disabled all of the related services. Booted into my current configuration. I did have some left over hard coded script path errors (which I am changing a bit at a time).

So far though its running OK using this methodology. It appears that the W2C box which was my only issues works for me even though there is no VR/SR and I get the HSPro logging error.

Today sometime will retest the auto start up using parameters you have specified.

What I had noticed on the previous build was that it seemed to somewhat cache the start of HS before the desktop was completely loaded. The only HW that is loading is the Digi Edgeports and the W2C box. I think the Digi drivers are still 32 bit while the W2C drivers are 64 bit.

My current base HSPro V44 running 32 bit "production" on W2003 has been pretty stable running for over a week or so. I did see HSSentry kick off after my handle count went into the 10K plus region after about 9 days or so without BLGarbage running (so I probably have a leak maybe somewhere). This time turnd on BLGarbage.

Overall the base 2011 is faster to the desktop and faster to the shutdown pieces. The HS boot and shutdown is not freezing nor causing any major hiccups that I can tell. I am pushing the whole setup sans Z-Wave but with over 16 serial devices and 3 USB hardware devices talking to the HS application. The W2011 WHS build is kind of a very stripped down WHS W2008R2 build. I've shut off as many core WHS functionality as I can with it. It will be utilized only for HSPro. No media sharing, no NAS, no on the network PC backup; very plan and simple similiary to the current W2003 box. I've been reading that MS wants to move everything now into the 64bit world such that we may not have a choice towards W8 in the future.

[Uncle Michael]

Yes. It (serial splitter) works extremely well. Both programs operate as if they have sole access to the com port.

Pete,
I need to take that back. My answer was based on my experience using XP. So far, it has not been behaving very well with Win7. (The virtual ports unexpectedly stop working. As you can guess, HS doesn't function very well when the com port shuts down.) I just downloaded an updated version. I'll post back when I have more info.

[Rupp]

Why not stick with XP?

[Uncle Michael]

Why not stick with XP?

Excellent question!

Long answer: The Win7 box was partly an experiment. Currently I have an N270 Atom that is rock solid, but it does not seem to be able to keep up with real-time processing consistently. I wanted to see if a moderately more capable processor might do the job and had an opportunity to try a netbook with an N570 dual core Atom. (I'm sort of trying to see how modest a machine I can get away with.) The netbook has Win7 Starter installed, so that's what I tried.

Interestingly, although the netbook seems snappier in many ways, like boot time, serving web pages, adding and editing devices and events, etc., the combination of Win7 and the N570 does not appear to be dramatically better than the WinXP and N270 in processing real-time event actions and interfacing with plug-ins. That, combined with the problem with the Serial Splitter, is making my fall-back option, a dual core Dell desktop tower running XP, look more attractive.

I plan to give the netbook a few more trials, in part to see if the serial splitter utility update solves the problem I saw in initial testing. If it does, then I want to get at least a few days of experience before drawing a conclusion. It seems likely, though, that HS will end up on the Dell before I'm done.

[Michael McSharry]

I have not used W7 for any of my real time computers, but I always use a .vbs script in my startup folder to sequence the applications at startup. In my case I typically need a delay to allow the SQL Server process to finish its initialization before I start xAP applications that source data that gets put into the database. On one of the computers HS is in list of applications in the .vbs startup file and it starts without issue. It is also typcially comparitively slow to go through its initialization so I do add delays after it as well before starting applications that may provide data to HS.