HouseBot

As per the subject really! Housebot occasionally (3 or 4 times a month) just disappears. Sometimes it can be restarted straight away, other times a restart of the pc is required.



When it starts it shows some errors for a couple of properties it cannot find, but I have no idea to what these relate.



I would attach my log and dump files, but I can't see how?



Any suggestions gratefully accepted.



Regards



James

Dump files aren't that big. you could post the contents here.

When HB starts, do you see any red 'X'es in the startup window telling you HB can't find some stuff in the database?

If this keeps happening to you and you can't figure out why AND HB runs fine for the remainder of the time, then join the club. You could use a simple DOS script to restart it when it shutdown so the server stays up all the time. Scott and dlmorgen created that script and it works perfectly for me. I also tested some programs that can turn your app into a windows server like AlwaysUp or ApptoServer, but after testing the DOS script worked best.

See below for the script. Put it into your startup folder and don't start HB manually anymore so this script can handle it!



Good luck...



Echo off

:Start

Echo Server has Started At: %Date% %Time%

"C:\Program Files\Meedio\Meedio HouseBot\HouseBotServer.exe"

Echo Server has Terminated At: %Date% %Time%

goto Start

Heres a copy of the dump file last time housebot disappeared:





====== Begin Dump - Wednesday, December 14, 2005 19:38:18 ======

Server Version = 2.22



==================================

======== House Server Thread =======

==================================

Thread Type = Main UI Thread

Thread ID = B14

Exception code: C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION

Fault address: 73DD3EBA 01:00002EBA C:\WINDOWS\System32\MFC42.DLL



Registers:

EAX:000300A9

EBX:07C3C750

ECX:0012C394

EDX:07C3C7D0

ESI:0012C394

EDI:07C3C7E0

CS:EIP:001B:73DD3EBA

SS:ESP:0023:0012C374 EBP:005C4232

DS:0023 ES:0023 FS:003B GS:0000

Flags:00010212



Call stack:

Address Frame

73DD3EBA 005C4232 Ordinal535+A

79747265 706F7250 0000:00000000





====== End Dump ======



Yes, I do have a number of red X's in the startup.



The only concern about using the DOS script is that sometimes when I manually restart HB it goes through its normal startup procedure then instantly disappears again. It seems that a complete restart of the PC is required to solve it. Have you seen it crashing this severly?



That said, if i was to use the script, how do I implement it? is it case of putting it in text file called something.exe in the startup folder?





Any help appreciated as always.



Regards



James

Put the DOS script in a file and call it HB_Startup.bat or something like that and put it in your startup directory. You could also put the script in your HouseBot directory and put a short cut to it in the startup directory. Basic Windows stuff!



If HouseBot disappears during startup, you probably have one or more errors in your database. Since the red 'x'ses come by so fast, it is hard to see what causes the problem if HouseBot disappears during startup. If it doesn't disappear like you wrote after a reboot, then select the top icon in the HB GUI called "Meedio HouseBot Server" and look at the "Recent errors:" window to see what happened during startup. Hopefully you can trace the errors there and fix them. Another way of fixing errors will be to change the dbase directly by using MS Access. I am not getting into that since it is too complex to do if you never worked with that program.

You probably created some properties, used them in a task and then deleted or renamed them again. Usually you cannot do this since HB checkes for this. If this is the case, some dependencies are wrong and they produce red 'x'ses.



The dump file itself can be because of another problem. I can't help you with that.



Good luck...

I experience the same problem.

Meedio (Pablo?) -> how about releasing a fix?