Windows client not starting after reboot

[logistics]

I have been battling with my windows clients not working for the past week. I have 5 Windows 10 home PC sticks and 2 windows 7 pro desktops that are all having the same problem. They had all been working nicely on 1.8.8 player and I recently upgraded them to 1.8.10 and all seemed okay. I also upgraded the CMS (docker on Ubuntu 16.04 lts) from 1.8.9 to 1.8.10 and all was well, until…….

I noticed that the clients although logged into the CMS were not updating but continued to play their content. I restarted most of the client computers to discover that the client wasn’t running but the watchdog was, and repeatedly giving a message of Restarting. No Active Processes.

I tried uninstall/reinstall client – made no difference

uninstall/complete removal of config & library files, configure client (with appropriate responses from CMS) – still not working.

Reset windows 10, reinstall xibo client 1.8.10 – no this didn’t fix it

Reset windows 10, reinstall xibo client 1.8.3 ( I thought since I knew this version worked previously it was worth a go) – no this didn’t fix it either

Clean install of windows 10, install xibo client 1.8.3, configure client (with appropriate responses from CMS) – still not working.

Then I tried something different which may give someone a clue what to try next. I disconnected the client pc from the network, did an uninstall/complete removal of config & library files, reinstalled xibo client 1.8.3, configured the client options with the correct cms ip address and key, hit save and waited for a message saying “unable to connect to remote server” then clicked on Launch Client. The client started as expected with the black xibo screen (the one with the cogs on it). I reconnected it to the network where it talked to the CMS and the client loaded the default layout from the CMS. I thought I was on a winner, but I celebrated too soon.

I restarted the client PC to make sure all was okay but I was back to the original problem of no xibo client running but the watchdog was running with the restarting message coming up again.

I only thing I think I can conclude from this is that the xibo server is okay (in fact I built a second cms version 1.8.10 docker on Ubuntu 18.04 lts) and loaded everything from scratch to make sure the server was not the problem, and there is nothing on the network causing this problem ( I created a separate network that was just the CMS and the client PC with no internet access). I know that the client 1.8.3 software is also okay as I (and many others) have used it successfully on different windows PCs. My only guess is that Windows changes something when it restarts but I don’t know what would have changed in both Windows 7 and 10 to cause the same problem on all my clients. Just to add insult to injury my boss wants me to put powerpoint viewer on all of them and manually update/create presentations until I can solve it. Unfortunately I have lost all of my automation as well as I used the commands to fire off Packetsender scripts to turn on and off TVs and projectors until I fix this.

Needless to say I will be very keen to try the ubuntu version of the player client when it is ready for release and get away from Windows. If anyone has any ideas on what to do next please let me know.

Thanks,
Kent

[DanBW]

Thank you for the detailed description of the troubleshooting you have been doing. When the player first connects to the CMS, the settings will be downloaded. Some of the settings will not apply until the player is restarted. If there is an issue with other settings, you may experience issues when those downloaded settings are applied. I would recommend checking your CMS Display settings, to make sure there is nothing in there that may cause an issue on reboot.

[DanBW]

I have included a link below to a FAQ that may help check that the display settings are ok:

Player starts minimised/off screen

If your Windows Player starts and appears to be a minimised / off screen, please check the following Display Settings -> Edit Display Profile assigned to your player -> Location tab If you have specified Width to a specific value, but left Height at 0, this will cause the issue described above. Please ensure that both Width and Height are set to either: 0 - in which case the Player will take the screen size and cover whole screen specific values different than 0. For multiple Player instal…

[logistics]

Dan, Thanks for your assistance.

The problem ended up being the CMS when I upgraded it to 1.8.10 and the new CMS I put together also on 1.8.10. To resolve the issue I downgraded the old CMS to 1.8.9 and the client players I hadn’t mucked around with came back to life. I rebuilt the new CMS from scratch (reinstall Ubuntu, docker, etc) also to 1.8.9 and connected the rest of the players to the new CMS and they also worked properly.

I don’t know what the cause was. I did look at the screen size etc as suggested in your reply but everything looked okay. I did change the settings and put them back to what they were just in case but that didn’t help. At least I know to test a bit more thoroughly next time I upgrade the CMS, and I will know how to get it going again. I will avoid the 1.8.10 update and worry about trying it again with a later update.

Thanks,
Kent

[DanBW]

Thank you for replying and passing on all of the information that you have. I’m happy to hear that you are back up and running but sorry to hear it involved reverting to the 1.8.9 version. We will continue to monitor the issue, should you find the problem reoccurs with this current setup, please reply to this post.

[DanBW]

Hi Kent,

If you should decide you would indeed prefer to be running on version 1.8.10, you could set up a Cloud Demo. This way if you run into the same issue, we can take a look at the instance and see if we can locate the problem. Should you decide to do so, I would be grateful if you replied to this post with any information, even if it is without fault. All the information you can pass on is helpful to us.

Many Thanks,