MMW 4 meltdown

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terryo
Posts: 299
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2011 9:11 pm

MMW 4 meltdown

Post by terryo »

I've been doing a live radio show using MMW for many years and never had a problem. What happened today still baffles me.

I have two identical HP EliteBook 8570p laptops with Windows 7 Pro. Neither laptop has ever connected to the internet. All music files and upgrades come from the 2 GB external HDs (WD Elements) connected to each. The hard drives are synchronized weekly with my master MMW library (on a Win 10 PC). The laptops are 'Add/Rescan' to these drives every Weds night. Everything is identical.

Both laptops use MMW 4.1.15.something. My main PC uses 4.1.20.1864. I haven't upgraded the laptops past 4.1.15 because one upgrade on the PC scrambled all my column arrangements in my playlists and erased the custom titles for the Custom 1, Custom 2, etc fields and I didn't want to lose my carefully laid out arrangements on the laptops.

Twenty minutes into my show MMW froze on the #2 laptop. I had a CD in ripping and the screen showed "Reading Files: Now Playing" even though the Now Playing screen had never been opened (this occurs fairly regularly but usually just slows the PC and/or laptops to a crawl for a minute or less).

After 3-4 minutes of waiting, I used Task Manager to close MMW. Upon reopening, MMW would display various playlists and seemed operational but no tracks would play. Then it froze again.

This time, I forced MMW to close, logged out, logged in and reopened MMW. MMW seemed to work but again nothing would play.

So I forced MMW to close, and shut Windows down. After waiting a couple minutes, I rebooted and reopened MMW. It came up with some sort of white text on black display, perhaps a skin, which would be really weird because I disabled skinning when I installed it. I was totally freaked. I was live on the radio and my right laptop is crippled.

I dug out some CDs and started cobbling together a show between the one functional MMW and the dozen or so emergency CDs I carry with me. Once my radio show was flowing smoothly again, I went back to the afflicted computer and found the music and playlists were there and playable but the displayed columns and collections were changed and the four custom ID3 fields lost their labels and reverted to Custom 1, Custom 2... I gradually started using it on the air. Except for the bizarre interface changes, it seemed to work fine.

How is what happened possible? I took a screen shot with my phone of the black interface. Perhaps it is a skin but I wouldn't know because I've never done anything with skins.

This really shook me because for many years MMW has been reliable when I am live on the radio. I've come to depend heavily on it. It enables me to program in so many creative ways that would not be possible without it. This is the first failure and I'm lost. Where do I start? I don't even know how to determine if this is a skin.

The other laptop is identical in every way. Is it a bomb waiting to follow suit?
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: MMW 4 meltdown

Post by Lowlander »

Could be a hardware issue with either the CD drive as you were ripping or the external drive.
terryo
Posts: 299
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2011 9:11 pm

Re: MMW 4 meltdown

Post by terryo »

Lowlander - "...a hardware issue with either the CD drive as you were ripping or the external drive."

Wha? It's hard to believe one of these devices could trick MMW into changing it's interface. Is an MMW installation really that unstable?

I've been using the same laptops with the same internal CD and the same external WD drives for years. I have done the same activities I did today hundreds of times without a hitch.

But my main questions remain: How do I determine if this new look is a skin? How do I restore it to the way it looked before? Is there a way to restore the carefully laid out column arrangement I had by transferring it from the one that still exists on the other, identical laptop?
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: MMW 4 meltdown

Post by Lowlander »

Tools > Options > Skins, it has both skin and skin override settings.

I'm not entirely sure which column/layout settings are stored where. There is the database, ini and registry.
terryo
Posts: 299
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2011 9:11 pm

Re: MMW 4 meltdown

Post by terryo »

Thanks for the help. I have everything settled back down except:

While trying to figure out how to restore the stock 'Recently Added' auto playlist, I created a 'Recently Added Content' auto playlist, which I can't figure out how to delete. I can delete individual occurrences as they pop up but I can't figure out how to stop them from being created.
Lowlander
Posts: 56491
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2003 5:53 pm
Location: MediaMonkey 5

Re: MMW 4 meltdown

Post by Lowlander »

Tools > Options > Tags & Playlist and disable the option to create them for newly added files.
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