3/5/2006 1:19:50 PM

Hi everybody,

I need to get your opinions on this.  We have been very careful about what was installed on our projection computer as most of you know.  It is only used for projection on Sunday mornings.  It has run extremely smoothly until this past week.  I first noticed that the backgrounds were stuttering on Wednesday night during a youth rally.  The only thing that has changed has been that they installed virus control on each computer on the network.  The projection computer hasn't had virus control on it until now.  I also noticed it is getting low on memory on the hard drive.  So, I deleted a bunch of stuff we didn't need and defragged the drive.  Usually that works.  However, on Sunday morning, it was stuttering again.  Defragging it didn't seem to make any difference.  The virus control is McAfee and supposedly it only scans files as they come into the computer.  I don't have the exact specs on that computer, but up until now it has worked really well and been able to handle everything.  Incidentally, it seemed to really be the long videos that were stuttering.  I'm not sure about the visualizations because we didn't use any.

Thanks!

3/5/2006 2:47:49 PM

I would suspend or stop McCaffee during services (or during a test, anyway) and see if that helps.

That's what changed. It's the most likely suspect.

Some AV will check every file as it's read off the disk and into memory.

3/5/2006 3:11:51 PM

I will try that, but I can't have every operator do that. 

3/5/2006 4:17:53 PM

If it is McAfee, you should be able to configure our McAfee to not check AV files.

3/5/2006 4:26:35 PM

Do you think McAfee would be scanning video files as we're using them?

3/6/2006 12:38:14 PM

Many AntiVirus programs now verify each file being accessed prior to allowing them to be used.  What I would do make it part of the startup requirements for operators that they disable McAfee during services.

3/6/2006 1:42:30 PM

Thanks for the replies!  I'll try disabling it prior to usage.  Is that what you guys do??? 

3/6/2006 2:20:30 PM

We don't seem to have that problem with Norton.

3/6/2006 7:09:34 PM

Ditto

We purchase Symantec AV 10 CE at a decent price directly from Symantec's online store. We purchased a 10 client license version, and all are managed by the file server. The only issue we have is the DOSCAN at every reboot, so I just reboot at the end of services and leave it running between services.

And yes, we do have a UPS for the projection PC. As a matter of fact, the church secretary is the day-to-day ISC, and she has seen to it that all workstation PCs have a UPS connected to them.

gap

3/7/2006 6:36:46 AM

We have McAfee on our projection machine with automatic updates enabled. We also have Windows update enabled. Draw your own conclusions...

3/7/2006 7:39:11 AM

Do your videos stutter at all Lee?

3/7/2006 7:53:13 AM

A few do but the occurrences don't corrolate with AV software. The majority do not stutter. There is much more problem when playing slide shows with video backgrounds; but these seem to be start-up delays that seem to smooth out over time.

There are only a few that stutter when playing songs, and it seems to happen more with files from one vendor than other vendors. In my case I am wondering whether those are related to codecs. But another issue is CPU utilization (which is itself related to codecs, among other things).

3/8/2006 5:37:58 PM

Ok, I am up at church.  Everytime I disable the virus scanner, it reenables itself.   I even went into the console and disabled it. 

 

Any ideas?

3/18/2006 3:22:10 AM

Karen, you may need more system memory. Going to different virus scan software might help you as well. We use AVGs anti virus software and it requires much less from your system. We have never had a virus problem since installing AVG, and the computer used for service works great! Check the system memory, and your memory on your video card. You should have at least 1gig of system memory, and at least 128meg of video memory on your card (256meg preferred).

3/18/2006 6:36:42 AM

Sounds like the IT department/person has set up some sort of policy (machine or domain) to keep the AV running.

I'm afraid you are going to have to talk to whoever installed the AV and explain the situation. Tell them that you would like to do a test with the AV off to see if that will help the stuttering problem.

I can't remember how much machine you have. But if it is hyperthreading capable, upgrading to V7 and turing hyperthreading on may help.

3/18/2006 7:53:28 AM

Actually on this computer, we do have plenty of RAM and video card memory.  Our church has implemented a new policy on virus control on all the computers.  There is no way I could get them to switch virus control on over 25 computers.  The computer guy did agree to tell the virus control not to scan the RTecnics folder.  However, I noticed yesterday a video was stuttering.  I'm not sure what the problem is now.  Is there any other folders that the virus control needs to bypass other than the RTecnics folder?  I just wish they would let us completely disable it during services.  But, would that help do you think? 

3/19/2006 12:35:43 AM

Sounds like Joel is right, you may have to discuss this problem with your IT guy. If all was working fine before the AV software was installed this maybe the problem. Telling the AV not to scan the RTecnics folder won't help, because if it is scanning any folder when you are running Song Show it could cause the issue (still using system resources durring the scan). It just doesen't seem that the AV should cause this to happen. The only time I have seen the AV do something like this was when it was set to active scan everything, and that slows things way down. You may have to test it with the IT guy there and see if disableing clears the problem, if so he will be there to see it. Sorry I couldn't be of more help!


Tom Russell
IT for Calvary Temple, Albuquerque, NM

3/20/2006 9:26:14 AM

I'm going to agree that you need to talk to your IT guy, although, I personally think it's silly for the projection cpu to be under the networks policies even if you are big church. The projection cpu needs the most flexibility out of all the cpus on the network, but it's not my church and an opinion. I have had this problem on our computer it was in the end about the fans being clogged up preventing enough ventilation. Have you considered chcecking your cpus cooling fans? When you crank on one of those videos your graphics card really starts to heat up and so does the rest of your system. You should really check if your fans aren't clogged up with junk, especially the one on the graphics card and that you have proper ventilation going to the computer. Now as far as the software is concerned do you have a corporate version of mcafee on there? I know just plane old macafee or System works are too memory intensive to be on a coputer which runs songshow plus which gradually eats up your memory ever so slowly especially when using video backgrounds. I use on our network Norton anti-virus corporate edition which iamgap mentioned, AVG is also good choice too, they are non intensive anti-virus programs. But if you have these full install versions of AV that come with an entire gammit of protective programs installed with it's anti-virus portion well expect to be stuttering if not a whole lot. It doesn't matter what folders the AV program is scanning so long as it's scanning or active your hard drive is busy with another program. Sonsgshow is selfish, for lack of better words, so it wants all the attention to work right during a service, unless you have yourself one of those SATA 10,000 Rpm Hard drives with a RAID 1 configuration, which i'm almost sure you don't have talk to your IT dude about the aforementioned as the other opinionators have minus the fan suggestion.

Yes He does,

~Daniel

West Hills Baptist Church
NY

3/20/2006 9:43:47 AM

I've been thinking about this issue for some time, and finally decided to chime in with my 2¢ worth.

I'm the "IT guy" at our church.  During the day I manage the data network for a public school system.  There is no way I would allow a non-virus-protected computer to access the school's network.  None.

On the other hand, your church projection computer is an entirely different situation - it needs to have every bit of its resources available during worship.  You're not going to be opening email and accessing the Internet at these times, so the most you should need is an active firewall.  IMHO and professional opinion as well, you should be able to disable the anti-virus and perhaps even your anti-spyware software during worship.  As long as you're not accessing Internet resources during worship, there's no threat and no need for the extra protection - especially if your spyware and virus protection software has been doing its job at other times.

In order to maximize the performance of our critical projection computer, we go without anti-virus and anti-spyware protection on our projection computer DURING WORSHIP ONLY.

Methinks you need to do some negotiating with the church IT guy.

Blessings,

Roger

3/20/2006 9:46:59 AM

...and another thing. I have Windows Update DISABLED on the projection computer. We'll do our Windows Update thing manually on MY schedule, not Bill Gates' schedule, thank you very much. I run it just before our weekly praise band rehearsals.

Roger

3/20/2006 10:04:51 AM

Depending on how intrusive your virus scanner is setup to be, it could quite easily be causing problems like this.

It may not be doing a system scan, but many times, virus scanners want to scan everything in memory and see what kind of useage is going on.  Some viruses cause strange use patterns to occur.  But this type of heuristic scanning sucks down a lot of system resources and would very easily cause a video to stutter on even the most powerful PC. 

The best solution would be to get an exception on the AV policy that allows you to shut it off during worship services.  As someone else already stated, chances are you’re not going to be surfing the web or reading email or otherwise exposing the PC to viruses at that point anyway.  Just shutting it off on a temporary basis solves both problems; you have 100% of your projection PC for SSP and you have your system covered with the virus protection.

On a side note regarding Windows Updates: normally updates are released by Microsoft on the second Tuesday of every month.  Once in a while if it’s a critical update they may release it sooner.  That’s not to say that randomly there isn’t something else new out there. 

I turn off auto-updates on all of my systems too.  But then there’s that stupid pop-up that always says “Your system might be at risk thing…”  I could see why people would be inclined to re-enable it.  That thing is ANNOYING.

3/20/2006 10:08:50 AM

In the Windows Security Center (in your Settings, if it's not on your task bar) one of the options in the left column is "Change the way Windows notifies me of potential security problems" or something like that. It's the last option.

Click into that and you can tell it what you want a balloon popup from, for the security center.

3/20/2006 12:16:55 PM

Sweet!!  I always get too frustrated with the Security Center to actually bother figuring this stuff out.

Thanks!

3/22/2006 8:49:00 PM

Tonite during the worship services rehearsal the stuttering was really bad.  I emailed one of our computer guys and copied and pasted some of your replies.  At this point, if they won't fix it, I can't see how we can keep playing motion backgrounds. 

3/23/2006 5:36:18 AM

Sounds to me like your admin folks need an attitude adjustment. Our they just aren't savy enough to figure out how to satisfy your request.

You might try explaining to the "Trustees" or "Elders" why the screen stutters, and how easy it would be to stop that distraction. This should reveal whether the walls have been put up for a valid reason, or if someone is just weilding their power.

3/23/2006 7:12:16 AM

I'm really sorry to hear that this is continuing. I pray that this can be worked out.

From a Data Processing point of view, it seems pretty straight forward. It worked ok. AV was installed. It doesn't work OK.

It seems obvious what you should check first. And they shlould be able to make an exception to thier policy for one machine.

3/23/2006 7:25:15 AM

At the very least they should let you test it without the AV software.  Also, if they're determined to exercise that much control over the machine(s) then they probably need to go to work at troubleshooting the problem themselves.

3/23/2006 11:56:14 AM

I fully agree.  As mentioned earlier, as long as you stay off the internet, don't open email during the test there is absolutely no reason not to test it with the AV off.  I have seen AV software affect a lot things, plus I am a firm believer that when software suddenly starts to cause problems, the first thing to ask is, what changed on the machine, generally, something did and is the culprit. 

We run McAfee's hosted ASP solution on all of our pc's and server and have zero problems with it. it. 

Just wondering, since the AV upgrade, does other software have a problem or run slow?

3/23/2006 7:39:34 PM

Well, I don't know if anything else runs slow on that computer because alls we use it for is projection.  There really isn't anything else we use on it except occasionally powerpoint and word.  Word was ok, but I only opened it once.  I'm also a firm believer in deciding what changed and then going from there.

3/24/2006 11:38:14 PM

To be honest, believe it or not, I never have installed and AV on my systems. Well, let me rephrase that...never USE an AV on my system. In my experience, it does nothing but slow, crash, create more chaos than having a virus. From time to time I will use an online scanner, and well, I've not had a virus since 1999/2000. Then again, I'm always in control of my system. Unfortunately in your case, being on a network and multiple operators, it's unfortunate.

Have you run an AV scan on the machine and has it found anything?
Next time the video starts to stutter like nuts, hit CTRL+SHIFT+ESC, which will open task manager, and click on "processes". Check the CPU usage, if it's at 100%, then something is causing the CPU to overload, hence the video stuttering.

In the column where it says CPU, (Image Name, User Name, CPU, Mem Usage), click on it twice, (it will sort the data by CPU, first click, ascending, second click, descending, etc. or something like that). Obviously SongShow should be taking up almost half of the cpu load, if there is something else that's taking up the other half, you should be able to find out what it is easily, and if it is, post the file name that's the culprit, it's very possible that it's the AV.

Not sure if it will help solve the problem, but worth a shot.

3/25/2006 7:17:55 AM

Well, like you, I have been extremely protective over this computer.  There has not been any AV on it since we've had it for two years.  However, there are only a select few who use it and nobody is on the internet.  The only time we're on the internet is to download songs from CCLI.  This computer is kept locked up.  I have kept it up to date with scanning it, etc.  No, there are no viruses on it.  This is a new policy that our church just implemented.  My only wish is that they would have informed me before they installed a bunch of stuff  and updates on this computer.  Now I'm having to spend lots of time on troubleshooting it that I didn't have to before all this stuff was installed. 

3/26/2006 4:37:10 PM

Hmm most unfortunate. My laptop is my own, therefore NO one else uses it.

Am I correct in this: the videos stutter the entire time? or just when fading between two?

3/26/2006 7:41:39 PM

A problem that I experienced similar to this was that the Pentium process hyper threading was turned on. This is not good for SSP. Turning this off fixed several problems and my videos do not stutter.

Hope this helps,

Jerry Higgs
Central Church of Christ

3/26/2006 8:03:29 PM

We don't have hyperthreading, but thanks!

3/26/2006 8:59:59 PM

My system has HT, no problems here.

3/26/2006 10:29:50 PM

Are you running 7.0 or 5.5?

I had sporadic problems with 5.5 that went away when I turned off hyperthreading.

However 7.0 works great with hyperthreading.

3/27/2006 4:37:54 PM

Yes I'm running 7. But I had no problems running 5.5 either.

In your case, you may have to set your ssplus.exe process affinity to 1 processor instead of 2 (since HT simulates muiltiple processors). That is, if you need the HyperThreading to run for other programs, it may be a better alternative than disabling it altogether.