Video plugin crashing windows?

[mhasting2004]

Hi all

Might not me the best place to post but it is related...sort of. Anyway i have a new you beaut laptop HP/Compaq 8710W and I now have a driver conflict somewhere when I run the same USB video interface (kworld  vs-usb2800D) and try and access the video thru Mach. Big blue screen of death... anyone else have a similar issue? Tried latest version of mach, the lockdown abd quantum.. all same result. Biggest difference between this laptop and the previous one is the video catrd is a Nvidia Quadro in th enew beast. 

Anyway i'll nut it out eventualy but thought I'd post the question incase someone has come across this in the past.

Cheers

Mark

[ggagnon]

Hi Mark,
I have the same problem with a Kworld product. Have you ever found what was causing crash with blue screen?
Regards,
Gaston

[mhasting2004]

Hi Gaston

I havent been concentrating on this for a while so no I havent found the fix yet.  Other info is I'm running under XP professional SP2. I'll try a few more diagnostics this weekend if I get a chance.

Cheers

Mark

[TomHubin]

Hello,

I have tried three laptops that have similar problems.

Compaq Armada M700, 750 MHz, Windows XP Pro

Dell Inspiron 8000, 850 MHz, Windows 2000 Pro

Dell Inspiron 8200, 1.5 GHz ?, Windows XP Pro

All for these laptops run Mach3 ok for the little bit of testing that I have done...jog, MDI, Gcode. All run the vendors software for my 3Com Watchport/V camera. All run both Mach3 and the vendors software at the same time side by side. No conflict or speed problems.

But when I try either the Video Window plugin or the 3d Video Probe plugin all have a similar problem. The video plugin works ok but the stepper clocking drops to about 1% of the normal value. That is not an exaggeration. I timed jogging and MDI. Furthermore, I was able to scan a key. It just took a few hours. The key scan point cloud is posted in another thread.

Furthermore, no matter how I exit the Video Window or 3d Video Probe, Mach3 still runs steppers at 1% of normal speed. To get the steppers running right I exit and restart Mach3.

Another situation is that if I load either the Video Window or the Video Probe then exit the plugin I cannot load the other plugin. As before, to switch plugins I have to exit and restart mach3.

Tom Hubin
thubin@earthlink.net

[sshneider]

Yo Yo Fellas,

Haven't had much time lately for video (been makin' chips) but saw activity over here and thought I'd jump in...

I am not runing a laptop so my info might not be totally relevant but perhaps it might get your "wheels" turning.  I too have seen the video crash dialog box.  This problem occurred with the very first Logitech camera I used.  This camera REQUIRED that you load the Logitech driver disc that came with the camera in order for the computer to recognize it.  Of course this disc installs a bunch of other ancillary programs/diagnostics/etc (read 'crap') that wasn't necessary.

Usually the video driver crash/error dialog would pop up when I closed the 3D video window, tried to access the 'source' button on the plugin  or stopped a scan in the middle of its process.  I wasn't really happy with the results from this camera and decided to switch to a camera that did not require any kind of special driver software package (i.e. plug it in and windows detects it and it works)  Nothing fancy, just a 'plain jane'.

Since the camera change, I have not had any problems with the stopped scans in process since I saw this problem and have not had this problem since.  Things just simply got a lot more stable with a different camera/driver combo.

Also, once I noticed this 'slow to a crawl problem.  When I look at the 'My Computer' screen it shows the devices connected to my machine (i.e. drives and other stuff like the camera).  Clciking on the camera icon will open up a preview window of what the camera 'sees'.  I opened this window and then launched Mach.  Mach ran like a Snail.  Something, somewhere was competing for the camera's resources and Mach lost the battle.  I closed the cameras video window thinkng that would speed things up but, it did not.  I had to restart the computer to regain performance.

I think there was one other occurance when I experienced performance issues and that was when I was trying to access my Mach 3 computer using a remote control software package called 'log me in'.  I was able to remotely control the computer but there seemed to be a delay so I discontinued using remote.

Bottom line here is, Mach should run like a rocket- video or not.  The scan Tom is referring to should have only taken him 1-2 minutes (if not less).  I would go crazy if a scan to 2 hours.  Currently I run either the Video window or the 3d Plugin (but not both at the same time) and things run fine and FAST.  If you are experienceing performance issues, something in your system is conflicting. 

It's hard to go through each and every other driver/software package you have runing on your machines to isolate what's causing your particular problem so, my advice to you would be:

-Run the driver test utiilty that comes with Mach to see how your machine is performing
-Run the optimize utility that is available from the downloads page and see if that finds anything that will help.
-Run a 'msconfig' command and look at the 'startup' tab to see if you can spot and processes that begin during startup which may be interferring and try removing them

Hopefully you will find something.

Good Luck,
Sid

The

[ggagnon]

Thanks,
The problem Mark and I are talking about is not a performance problem, it is the STOP Blue screen, the so called "blue screen of death" as soon as the video plug in is selected in Mach3. The blue screen shows the 8E code and some references to emBDA.sys driver. The Kworld usb28xx digitizer is otherwise working ok. It is, so far, only in Mach3 that the problem arises. Maybe the plug in comes up with some default parameters incompatible with the digitizer driver I wish I knew. The video window does not have time to show up before the blue screen appears.   
Any idea
Gaston

[sshneider]

Uh,  ok- sorry for the misunderstanding but I still think it's a conflict- have you tried runing the optimize utility? 

[ggagnon]

Where can I get that utility?
Gaston

[TomHubin]

Hello Sid,

> Usually the video driver crash/error dialog would pop up when I closed the 3D video window,
> tried to access the 'source' button on the plugin  or stopped a scan in the middle of its process.
>  I wasn't really happy with the results from this camera and decided to switch to a camera that
> did not require any kind of special driver software package (i.e. plug it in and windows detects
> it and it works)  Nothing fancy, just a 'plain jane'.

> Since the camera change, I have not had any problems with the stopped scans in process since I
> saw this problem and have not had this problem since.  Things just simply got a lot more stable
> with a different camera/driver combo.

I have wondered about my camera drivers as well. The 3Com Watchport/V was first sold in the mid 1990's. Several manufacturers and improvements later it is now sold as the Digi International Watchport/V2 or Watchport/V3. I am using the older cameras, the /V version. I have to install from the CD or from a downloaded file. If not, Windows has no knowledge of the camera.

The /V2 and /V3 versions were created about 2002 so Windows might have built in drivers for those. These sell for about $150 so I don't have any. I have several of the old /V version because they are on eBay for $10 to $30 and they worked under Mach3 on a friend's Windows XP desktop that I have occasional access to.

Perhaps the ticket is to find a camera with which Windows is already familiar...one that does not require an installation CD. What camera did you end up using? Please be specific enough that I could borrow or buy one just like it if I chose to do so.

Where is there a list of cameras for which Windows 2000 or XP is ready to go?

Tom Hubin
thubin@earthlink.net

[mhasting2004]

The reason that I am using the Kworld product is that , one I already had it for a video streaming project I did a while back and, two, I want to use a "real" camera not a web cam as it will be easier to make a Schiemflug (sp?) mount. The Kworld usb device is a video converter (and a cheap one) that takes PAL/NTSC input video and converts it to ...MPEG? (can't remember) and ports it to the usb connection.  I haven't had a chance to revisit this recently and I just had to take the transfer case out of my Defender so this weekend is pretty much shot.

Getting a blue screen of death is pretty serious conflict issue.  You mentioned a BDA.sys error... this rings a bell with an issue I had with a different card when I was streaming video using microsoft expressions. When I get a chance I'll do a bit more digging..... till then I have a gearbox to rebuild

Cheers

Mark