Boxee box freeze

[alexbak]

Hi Guys,
now sure how common this is is, but from general searches couldnt find what i was looking for (here or www).
i have my box since august and it freezes. a lot.
i tried wiping the cache, database factory defaults but still. it mainly freezes when trying to play network content after getting back from sleep.
it also freezes when i try to shut it down by remote (not button) - but that is prolly unrelated.

any cure for my pain?
are there any logs / debugs i can look at or even better send to dev?
i've worked as software qa and now as support tech lead in product companies so i'm pretty proficient with linux and internals - just let me know where to look for and what to fetch

thx!
Alex

[darcilicious]

Your best work around is to turn off the Boxee Box when you're not using it. Sleep mode isn't saving you any power consumption and seems to cause more problems that it's worth.

[jebise]

I used to keep one of my BBox on 24/7 before my NAS and never had this issue and yes i had the screensaver enabled.

Here is my suggestion, Get into BBox recovery > Reset Setting > Factory Default > load BBox and Update > Once at login use Power button on BBox to shutdown > Recovery again > Reset Settings a second time > Restart > Reconfigure BBox and add sources > let it sit on the home screen for 2 or more hours so it scans and identifies everything. You can also try to add your sources one at a time and let it sit for a bit and add another source etc.

Yes the above is a bit excessive and you should not have to do it that way at all, but it can't hurt

I found that most of the freezing issues i had was caused by my sources never finishing scanning or getting stuck at identifying. Also what firmware are you on? the was 1 firmware that caused my BBox to hang every time i tried to shutdown.

[alexbak]

Thx Guys.
I'm on the latest firmware.
I appriciate all the help and the responses, but i was looking to get in touch to boxee box support or even dev if there are any to get it resolved.
i'm confident there are error or even debug logs that can be useful to pinpoint the root cause.
if this is not the right forum to get that kind of support - plz let me know (and even better point me to the right direction).

this is a consumer device - it shouldnt have so many annoying bugs (in my opinion).

Cheers,
Alex

[kevin808]

I'm having the same issue mainly with shut-down, it just hangs forever until I do a manual power-down by holding the button down. I was on the latest Firmware but just installed the beta 1.5 and both versions exhibited this behavior. (Dar - I do turn off the BB while not using it because I know the fan runs constantly and I hate the thought of it collecting more dust than necessary and/or wasting electricity) I have also had some random hangs here and there. Box is pretty new, got it just before Christmas, it has one 1TB drive attached and scans 1 network source which is another 1TB drive hooked up to an Apple AE. This is VIA SMB.

Any other suggestions other than a full recovery? (I will try this as a last resort) Should I clear caches? Delete sources and re-add? Any order to that?

Thanks in advance for your help

[Pyrophorics]

Same here, mine would freeze on shutdown, which I could deal with, but also when exiting media. I got tired of the bugs so switched to a different streamer.

Hopefully you find an answer. Let us know if you do!

[mrjohnyblaze]

The problem is directly related to the scanning interval. If you update your sources to be scanned less frequently or preferably to once then you problem will magically go away.

[Pyrophorics]

The problem is directly related to the scanning interval. If you update your sources to be scanned less frequently or preferably to once then you problem will magically go away.

I've tried changing those setting but it didn't help with media exiting freezes. How would that help with Boxee shutdown? All my options were set to default anyways, so if this were the fix, why hasn't Boxee acknowledged and adjusted in an update? :/

[mrjohnyblaze]

I've tried changing those setting but it didn't help with media exiting freezes. How would that help with Boxee shutdown? All my options were set to default anyways, so if this were the fix, why hasn't Boxee acknowledged and adjusted in an update? :/

I was responding to the OP who had freezing when resuming from sleep. I cannot speak for why Boxee Team has not fixed it, they do not fix lots of things.

[darcilicious]

I've tried changing those setting but it didn't help with media exiting freezes. How would that help with Boxee shutdown?

I believe the thinking is that if the Box is busy scanning and identifying when you go to power it off, it will take longer to shutdown -- waiting until there's a good place to stop the ongoing scanning process so that it can pick up where it left off when you next power on.

All my options were set to default anyways, so if this were the fix, why hasn't Boxee acknowledged and adjusted in an update? :/

Default settings aren't always the best settings for everyone, they're just a good starting place. If you have 20 sources, or 1000s of files then something other than the default might be more suitable.