Before I pester Ken

sebastiantombs

sebastiantombs

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Dec 28, 2019
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New Jersey
I normally don't install updates reflexively but on Monday I installed 5.5.6.21 and it promptly blew up. It would run for about five minutes, CPU alternating between 100 and 50 percent, then crash. So I installed the latest stable version, 5.5.6.20. That behaved the same way. So I then managed to deactivate the license and uninstalled BI. I didn't clean the registry though. Then a full, new, install. It's a PITA re-creating all the cameras and I'm still working on the clones because some of them are "fine tuning" projects which takes time. I've hit a problem that I can't fix though.

The clone cameras, among other things, are used to trigger sounds so we know when someone approaches the house or enters the driveway. The sounds are the stock ones from BI. When I create the alert if I "test" it the sound works fine. If I test it from the "Alerts" main tab, the SMS message works fine, even plays the right sound, but no audio at all from the BI machine. No audio from the BI machine on actual alerts either.

BI is running as a service and logs in using my credentials, administrator, on Win10. I checked the help file and that was mentioned so I double checked it. I've also tried every selection for the sound device and sometimes it will work, but not reliably, if I select "default wav". Sometimes it will work, but rarely, with plain "default". When I say not reliably or sometimes I mean it might work once a day, if that often. All this worked fine before the crash and re-install so I'm wondering if something went corrupt with the re-install.

Any ideas are appreciated.
 
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Yup, sound works fine from Brave browser for example. It actually works on the alert config page where you select the sound. It just doesn't work when an alert actually happens.

Incidentally, the "pop" from a remote login and the "boop" when a remote logout happens don't work either.
 
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Some audio devices have the audio stream turn off when it is inactive, then it fades in when there's a sound but it is slow to do it. Try having a very quiet youtube video going in the background and see if that makes the BI sounds reliable. If so, there are some apps you can get that play an inaudible tone continuously to solve exactly that problem.
 
I'd agree, except this feature worked fine before the crash and burn on Monday. Never missed an alert sound and always heard the login/logout of remote sessions. Now nothing, well maybe once a day which also makes it really weird. When it does actually fire the audio the machine has been sitting with the console closed and the monitor off for hours, then an alert or two will sound, verified alert not something hung in cyber space from earlier. It really has me scratching my head.

On the plus side, CPU and memory are both down about 10% :)
 
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sebastiantombs said:
I'd agree, except this feature worked fine before the crash and burn on Monday. Never missed an alert sound and always heard the login/logout of remote sessions. Now nothing, well maybe once a day which also makes it really weird. When it does actually fire the audio the machine has been sitting with the console closed and the monitor off for hours, then an alert or two will sound, verified alert not something hung in cyber space from earlier. It really has me scratching my head.

On the plus side, CPU and memory are both down about 10% :)
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Have your checked the volume slider on the top right of the console?
 
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Yes, it's at half volume. In fact BI does play audio from the cameras fine as well. What ever it is it's related to the way the sounds are triggered by alerts. That seems to be the only thing being effected. I've been adding clones and they all behave the same way so I'm pretty much convinced it's not a bad config for the cameras.
 
Natey2 said:
Almost sounds like it might be a good idea to do a full system backup (e.g. Macrium Reflect, Windows Server Backup, ... etc) before attempting a BI upgrade, even if minor.
So you can get back to the precise pre-upgrade environment, easily.

Just my $0.02
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This should be standard practice before upgrading any software. That said, I dont and I have never had an issue that could not be resolved by downgrading to a previous release. The best practice is to only update production systems to versions that BI indicates are stable - this choice is given to you on the update page.
 
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I've been thinking about that, reverting back to 5.5.6.6 or so. There was one version that behaved really well so I'll check my notes and see what specific one it was and try that next. I do have a clone of the drive from last Sunday and could use that as well, but I'd rather straighten out whatever is wrong with this one.
 
fenderman said:
This should be standard practice before upgrading any software. That said, I dont and I have never had an issue that could not be resolved by downgrading to a previous release. The best practice is to only update production systems to versions that BI indicates are stable - this choice is given to you on the update page.
Click to expand...

A little off topic - but I can't resist putting in a plug for a Synology NAS! I used to run an old Xeon home server that was a power hog for about 6 years and then last years I upgraded to a SFF computer with a Synology NAS for storage. One of the features of Synology is their 'Active Backup for Business' software that does daily backups of my computers and has the ability for a full metal restore with a boot usb drive. Very pleased with Synology

Also - are you running Blue Iris Update Helper? Full daily backups of the registry can really come in handy at times. (If you had it installed maybe you forgot about it - I did)

github.com

GitHub - bp2008/biupdatehelper: A Windows service which helps manage Blue Iris updates

A Windows service which helps manage Blue Iris updates - bp2008/biupdatehelper
github.com github.com
 
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Yes, I have BI Update Helper running and backing things up as well.

Never even considered, seriously, Synology. With the current camera load I don't want to pay for all those extra cameras on a system that just isn't as flexible. YMMV though.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
Yes, I have BI Update Helper running and backing things up as well.

Never even considered, seriously, Synology. With the current camera load I don't want to pay for all those extra cameras on a system that just isn't as flexible. YMMV though.
Click to expand...

The Synology is just for storage. Blue Iris records to the New folder which is on a 2 TB 2.5" hard drive in the SFF computer. Blue Iris then transfers the files to the Stored Folder on a 12 TB WD Purple drive in the Synology using the SMB Service.

If you had a full registry backup from BI Update Helper, I would have thought you could have uninstalled Blue Iris, deleted the current registry keys, reinstall Blue Iris, import the Reg Backup and you would be right back to where you were?
 
What I did was uninstall, then a re-install, fresh, from the Perspective site. I had hoped a fresh start, from basically scratch, would cure the crash problems which it did. It also spawned the no sounds from alerts problem.

I understand using a NAS, used them in corporate IT where there was a real need. For BI I can put enough drive into the BI machine to handle BI nicely and have another 6TB of drive that's used for storage for all the other machines on the LAN. Heck, I've got 13TB of storage in the BI machine just for BI now and can add another two physical drives if I need them. SFF isn't in my "vocabulary" for what amounts to a server style service.

I just reverted back to 5.5.6.11, that was the version I found to be very stable and efficient. Sounds on alerts are back once again. So there is either something wrong with 5.5.6.21 or there's a hardware conflict of some type between my BI machine and 5.5.6.21. Now I see 5.5.7.0 was released this morning. I think I'll wait a week or two and see if anything pops up about it before plowing further ahead.

Thanks to all who commented here.
 
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And I spoke too soon. Most of the cameras were triggering sounds and I went and added another two clones this evening. Now only one camera sporadically play the wav file. Basically back to square one again.
 
get that Clone drive out and write it to your C:\ drive
before you kick the Dog or crush innocent bugs.
 
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I'll preserve that image and send an email to BI support before I go whole hog ad dump it back onto the NVME drive.
 
So you're not going to revert back to your saved drive? You could clone the clone, and still have the original?
 
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I don't think I have another 500GB drive hanging around, but I can easily image it onto another machine with the drive space for it or maybe even another drive on the BI machine. I'll have to check.
 
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I shut down cloning for this week, it's scheduled for Saturday nights, until I get this resolved. I do run images and incrementals as well though as well as Update Helper backing things up.
 
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