XXHighEnd

Using Minimize OS with "Stop Desktop Services" and "Stop WASAPI Services" works nicely.  But turning on "Stop Remaining Services" will keep XXHE unattended mode from ever starting - or at least from starting for as long as I've been prepared to wait, over a minute.

Am I simply not being patient enough, or is something not working right?

BTW, just as an aside: Can't use Phase Alignment, it seems.  I'm thrilled with the sound provided by my current settings on a very rudimentary system, so I'm not feeling a great loss, but I was curious what it would sound like.  Have all the requirements, and player cover art shows Phase Alignment activated, but my amp is very low powered and it appears the protection circuitry is kicking in.

Hi Jud,

Is this on another PC now (I mean, compared to when you had it all working before) ? If so, check your anti virus software; It is *the* reason to stall a boot into Minimized.
Anti Virus software usually can't be stopped, even by you. This means you'd have to uninstall it. If you want of course.


Regarding the Phase Alignment - So what you say is that it plays with the +/- not activated, but as soon as you stop, activate one of them, play (and change nothing else) your amp gets silent ?

Peter

hi all,this is slightly off topic .anyway the long waiting to start happens with the playback drive in my big pc  and when unattended playback is checked . If my playlist is formed by say 3 albums it takes several minutes to xx he to fill the Usb stick with the prepared files. Stefano (via smartphone.)

Hey Stefano via Smartphone,

It is not only off topic, but also obvious don't you think ? So, using a slooooww USB stick to copy the files to (as your Playback drive I assume) … what to expect else ?

If this was just a warning to others … good to recognize.

Peter

Hi, Peter.  Same PC.  "Minimize OS" works fine as long as I don't select "Stop Remaining Services."  If I do select that and then try "Minimize OS," the dialog comes up that says to wait for the services to stop.  Then one of two things happens - either I wait for the dialog to go away and it never does, or I click OK after a while and nothing more happens until I grow tired of waiting, bring up the XXHE window again and unselect "Stop Remaining Services."  (Edit: Want to clarify that I never tried "Stop Remaining Services" before this, so I don't know if it is any sort of regression.)

For Phase Alignment, you're correct - if PA is not activated, everything works and I hear music.  If PA is activated (I've only tried the minus, since phase is not inverted), then the cover art shows *~* and the player UI indicates the selection is playing, but the power light in my amp dims (doesn't go out entirely, but the light output is less) and no music comes from the speakers.  The amp does have a couple of different types of protection circuitry, and I think it probably is not liking what it "sees" from PA.

Ok, so that only means it never has worked. Well, go hunting for that anti virus program ...

It's ESET NOD32, version 5.  It really hates XXHE.  I can't finish the download of the compressed installation files or run the install unless I turn it off.  It's a fairly common (and very good) antivirus, so I'd be a little surprised if no one has mentioned its distaste for XXHE to you before.

No particular problem telling it to stop while I'm playing in "minimize" mode - have a hardware firewall set up at home.

Jud,

Ever back, when Minimized OS was introduced, it was fairly common practice to look for virus scanners or more generally, what could hold up killing services. This got out of the picture by now. Not that it for the more newbees should have … So, a typicle example from something not being in the Tutorials yet. But it should …

Regards,
Peter

PS: remember, most often shutting off does not help; uninstalling will. If it works for you without the latter, good !

Well, shutting off did not work.  Want to look to make sure Win Defender isn't running, because I'm reluctant to uninstall this AV (nice low resource usage, calls no attention to itself generally, except with the installation of -7).  May decide to live with whatever SQ difference there might be between stopping remaining services and not doing so.

Quick question about Phase Alignment: Anything in your experience that would make PA more palatable to my amp?  Have tried lowering volume to -22.5db, with no change - amp's protection circuitry still kicks in.

Have thought of using the amp as pre-, and hooking it to my former amp from the downstairs system, a 100wpc model; but that might be rather massive power into my little bookshelf speakers.  I have visions of speaker cones hitting the opposite wall.  And it may make no difference to the N22's protection circuitry's reaction to PA whether it is being used as an integrated or a preamp.  Easy enough to try, though.

I wouldn't "try" anything as such Jud. Really.

And about those services, well, if you can't get that done, then what to say. Use Foobar ?
It would be a total waste. Not that you will know (better) at this time, but still …

Regards,
Peter

Hi, Peter.  You know when I say "try," I mean with all the precautions mentioned in the user documents.  (I mean, I've got the multitester, so why not enjoy using it?)  Both the multitester and the old amp are sitting in the same room as my XXHE rig, so it would not take much time to employ due precautions and then test.

As far as services, I can assure you (as you already know) XXHE sounds so much better than Foobar any comparison is absurd, even without being able so far to stop the remaining Win services.  I can think of a couple of things to look at before confronting whether to uninstall ESET.  One is making sure Win Defender is not running, as I mentioned.  Another is turning off the services in Windows directly, one by one, until I see whether there are any that refuse to be stopped.  Could you provide something like a list (or a link to a discussion of this in the forum?) of other services that ought to be stopped for best SQ; or is it easier the other way around (here are the few that absolutely need to be on); or is this impractical, as everyone's environment is somewhat different?

Jud,

Defender shuts off automatically anyway (I feel we may have a miscommunication about this) and what's for the others, I don't like anything on the forum about this.

This doesn't mean I can help you, but I am not there now to do so. In a couple of days I will be though. So, if you can sit that out …

Very good about the Multimeter. Just go ahead with that.

Ok, good.
Peter

Yep, no problem.  Will see if I can be any more successful on my side before then.


Will do.  Now that I have talked about how careful I am, it will be a bit of an embarrassment if my speaker cones wind up in the opposite wall.  But I would post a photo for everyone's enjoyment if that happened, so it wouldn't be a total loss.   :cry:

And Jud, I recall that I built in a log entry (for the XX log file) which shows the obstructive process (hanging) once you waited sufficiently enough on the "Wait for Services to stop" and then press cancel.

Not sure though, and I can't check it at this time …

… Which all is a kind of moot of course when you already know what it is and wish to keep on running it. But notice :

Once you are in the "all shut off mode", and which should include the Network (LAN), nothing is available to access your PC from anywhere. So, there is no virus danger at that moment. One thing : this counts for being in that Mode and once you have all On again, you are unprotected. So, this comes down to this AV program which doesn't allow dynamically being shut Off/On. Btw, Windows Defender does. So, when you'd have to uninstall your AV and Install it again once all is On, that's a no-go (if it were for me to decide). Too much hassle.

Regards,
Peter

Will look for it (hope I can recognize it when I see it).


Well, I wonder about that.  The AV UI certainly indicates its functions are being shut down (throws up a dialog saying "You're now unprotected" or words to that effect), and I can check of course with Task Manager and/or ProcMon to confirm.

Of course I would be happy if the AV is not the problem, since I generally like it, though as I noted before I am not overmuch worried about viruses (more about when others are using the computer than myself).

I never use AV programs. They ALWAYS slow down. Ha three times in my life a virus two times  because of others using my PC and one time because of hotel wifi in the US. Always blame someone else of course.

So it looks as though our lesson for today (and every day  ;) ) is that Peter knows what he is talking about.

There could be an entry in the XX log, but I wasn't able to identify anything that called out what was happening when XXHE wasn't able to shut down the remaining services.

Somehow Win Defender and Firewall had managed to get themselves turned on again, so I turned them off, but that wasn't the problem.

No, of course it was the AV.  Though it complained that I was "unprotected," only one of about seven running AV processes was actually turned off at the time.  And they make it a PITA to turn everything off, since 6 of the 7 are only off until the next reboot, while the 7th *requires* a reboot to shut it down.

So I set the one process to stop as of the next reboot, rebooted with OS minimized, then turned off the other 6 processes at a sub-level of the AV UI.  Whereupon XXHE was able to stop all the remaining services within a couple of seconds and begin play.  And yes, Peter, it sounded even that much better - I was glad I persevered.   :smile:

So it may require some fiddling each time with the AV UI (and more to turn it back on again for when my wife and stepson use the desktop), but sonically it is worthwhile.

Now for some work in the yard, and later the multimeter to see whether hooking up a more powerful amp might allow use of PA.

Jud, always nice to hear when things work out as I intend.
And your feedback is super. So yes, it will turn off one process at the time (now I think of it) because it just hangs on the first. But :
I think it doesn't need a reboot for each process ? Just another attempt of Unattended playback ? Not sure.

It may also be that if you look at those processes (and/or services) top-down in the sequence you shut them off, that starting with the last one may not ever start the others. Not sure that is helpful though in your situation.

Peter

The reboot is required by the AV program itself to shut off one of its processes.  This process then remains shut off until the user turns it on again (which again requires a reboot).

The AV treats its other half dozen or so processes differently: one can choose to turn them off effective immediately for various lengths of time, the maximum of which is "Until next restart."

I haven't yet tried just turning off the process that requires a reboot and seeing if XXHE will take care of the others by itself.  Will let you know if that works.

BTW, you have permission to quote that bit about "Peter knows what he is talking about" in discussions with family members, except I think I know what the reaction would be.   ;)

Yes, stopping the one process that the AV requires a reboot to turn off allows XXHE to shut down the remaining processes on its own.

For future reference by anyone running the ESET AV software, the particular process that requires a reboot to stop is called "HIPS" (Host-based Intrusion Prevention System).  The ESET manual page about it is currently here: http://download.eset.com/manuals/eset_ess_5_userguide_enu.pdf#page=41

Stopping it requires you to open the AV's full UI; go into Setup; under Computer/HIPS click on Enabled, choose to disable, click OK in the AV's UI window, and reboot.

Thank you Jud ...