HC800 crashing every 20 mins

[badjesus]

Yeah, I have had a few people tell me those parentless programming records are fine. I can't see how that wouldn't affect performance, but whatever. 

Well as far as the HC800 goes, I am not sure what to do now. I really don't want to factory reset it. I have programming that took me HOURS to do. Right now I feel very strongly that HouseLogix can go to hell. 

I started asking around more. I have spoken with about 20 installers and EVERYONE hates that auto update driver. The reaction I got was :

"So I installed the auto update driver and....." I get cut off with
"Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.... no you didn't, did you?"

Like it is known to everyone else that this driver is a giant piece of crap that corrupts projects. 

[phileaton]

I wouldn't be so quick to blame Houselogix. I think a lot of people have been using the auto update driver without problem as well. From my understanding all it does is replace the driver on disk with a newer version of the file and restart director. Im not sure that should cause many problems. Part of my driver build script involves doing an ssh upload to the controller which replaces the driver files and then restarting director. I've literally done it thousands of times on my test systems without ever corrupting a project. 

 

In regards to programming, it may not help you a whole lot, but you can copy programming from Composer and paste it into a text editor. This will give you a bunch of XML code. Your device IDs will be incorrect after a restore, but you can use this as a guide for restoring your programming, or to find and replace device IDs and past it back into composer with a fresh install. Still a pain, but slightly better than starting from scratch. 

[badjesus]

So I did it, I factory reset it... seems like that has made it even worse. 

I can't update it. it just tells me this: 

 

Missing update information for GNU C Library

The update will try again later. 

And it is just sitting there. Can't do anything. 

[badjesus]

So after an hour, did a soft reboot through ssh.... still won't come online

[badjesus]

So what do you do with an HC800 that won't even boot into the recovery USB?

[badjesus]

I can still SSH into it but i can't see it in system manager. On the display, it just shows as "SYstem running: ok     IP: (not available) lan : [shows the mac]"

[badjesus]

Can't get it to read from the USB, but I manually set it in system manager, enabled directory and IO, got it to show up and ran the updater again.
It was going much better till it got to the navigator and now for about 15 mins it just keeps saying "Could not install control4 navigator".... wtf? how do you get around that????

[badjesus]

Does anyone know, during recovery... if ./MC does nothing.... what do you do? I dont see a file nor a folder called MC. 

edit: Nevermind, the fucking stick doesn't work on the hC800... WTF!

[badjesus]

So.... factory reset again... update again... everything again.... start complete new project instead of recovery....... add all of my rooms, all of my lights, half of my media stuff, go to add SONOS -> BAM! FAIL! CRASH! BOOM!
I am starting to think my HC800 is just dead. FUBAR... no more C4 for me. 

[nikon]

There is a small factory restore button on the HC800 on the back to the right of the power connector.  It may be covered with a sticker. Get a paperclip and press it down GENTLY and hold it until the wifi light flashes a weird pinkish type of colour then let go.  This will initiate the factory restore.

[badjesus]

I did that this morning, that is how I factory reset it. I have had to factory reset it a few times now. Started with a complete new project. 

I completely rebuilt everything from scratch. I only have about half of the system up right now, no programming. It crashed a few times with SONOS but then seemed overly stable. The last thing I did was identify an OLD hc200.
It seemed like that was the culprit because as soon as I loaded up the navigator, it kept crashing again.

SO I swapped it for a spare HC250 I was going to use in my theatre. But now, when I run the update agent on the HC250... it crashed again.
Now, it is crashing every few minutes again. This is so unbelievably frustrating. 

 

[badjesus]

I love control4 error message. It just keeps repeating over and over in the update manager "Services are running normally" and it won't do anything

[badjesus]

I just did another factory reset. This time, to update it, I made a new project with JUST it in it. 

It still always seems to hang here : ((attached photo)) 

 

On the screen, it says 


ATFTP Daemon...    OK
Flash UI....                OK
Button Watcher...     OK
System Running...    OK
Ip:( Not Available ) lan: 00:0F:FF:57...(then the rest of the mac)

The screen as well. Instead of being a dark grey is GREEN. It seems to go green when I do a factory reset but then after first reboot goes black/dark grey

Am I literally SOL at this point?

I usually leave it at this screen for an hour and nothing happens. Should I leave it overnight?
 

[Gix656]

Any chance there might be an ip conflict? Is there a dhcp reservation setup on your router for the controller?

[SMHarman]

Or that download manager software thingy (blanking on the name) without the patch applied to the controller.

[control4user007]

Just an idea, but I think my dealer once ran something called "inspector" on my main controller when we thought that the OS was corrupted. I'm not sure what that would detect, but might be worth a try.

[badjesus]

Any chance there might be an ip conflict? Is there a dhcp reservation setup on your router for the controller?

Nah, checked IP first thing. I have created a new wide open network and tested it there. 

 

Or that download manager software thingy (blanking on the name) without the patch applied to the controller.

Hrmm? The USB restore? I tried that. You can't use it on a HC800 according to other posts on this thread. I did try though, failed bad.

I have also tried the manual update from USB. The last screenshot i posted is from using that. It says downloading software for the GNU C and then fails there. It just hangs.... does nothing. Left it over night... NOTHING

[badjesus]

Just an idea, but I think my dealer once ran something called "inspector" on my main controller when we thought that the OS was corrupted. I'm not sure what that would detect, but might be worth a try.

K Thanks, I will start looking around the dealer knowledge base for this. 

[badjesus]

Do I have to re-register the controller after I factory reset?
It says "Registered" but I also notice it is saying "Check in unavailable. VPN connection bay in invalid"

If I do re-register, how does that affect my 4sight?

[Letran]

Do I have to re-register the controller after I factory reset?

It says "Registered" but I also notice it is saying "Check in unavailable. VPN connection bay in invalid"

If I do re-register, how does that affect my 4sight?

 

it wont affect your 4sight. Those licences are associated to your control4 account not your controller or controller registration

[badjesus]

WOW!!!!

Called C4 tech support and spoke with Mike. He is the FIRST and ONLY helpful C4 tech I have spoken with yet. What an awesome guy!!!!

So how I got it going........

I disconnected an HC250 I was using as a navigator. It was just added yesterday and was still 2.4. We made a whole new project with it and updated it to 2.7.1 on it's own.

We then factory reset the hc800 for about the 45 time.

THen we went in and added it as a secondary controller to the HC250.

We then updated the HC800 and BAM! = worked

So far, it hasn't crashed yet. 

I reloaded the project, and then the advice is to just leave it for a few hours. Don't touch it... let it mesh... let it get everything going. 

After a few hours, if it hasn't crashed, backup the project with all of the new settings, then I will go in and identify the now updated HC250 and I should be back to normal (well almost. I still have to identify a couple of switches, add notifications, add programming and scenes, etc).  

 

 

BTW, inspector is a thing It runs through SSH only though to my understanding. You shell in and just type "Inspector"

[SMHarman]

Nah, checked IP first thing. I have created a new wide open network and tested it there.

Hrmm? The USB restore? I tried that. You can't use it on a HC800 according to other posts on this thread. I did try though, failed bad.

I have also tried the manual update from USB. The last screenshot i posted is from using that. It says downloading software for the GNU C and then fails there. It just hangs.... does nothing. Left it over night... NOTHING

No I meant that torrent software that crashes controllers with badly formatted IP packets after about 20 minutes.

[badjesus]

No I meant that torrent software that crashes controllers with badly formatted IP packets after about 20 minutes.

There is no torrent program running in my house. I have 2 seedboxes and sFTP only. 

Good to know though. I wasn't aware of anything like that. 

 

[badjesus]

I thought there was  way to mark things as resolved. I can't seem to find that to close this off.

Everything seems to be uber stable now! (hope I didn't just jinx it)

[South Africa C4 user]

I thought there was  way to mark things as resolved. I can't seem to find that to close this off.

Everything seems to be uber stable now! (hope I didn't just jinx it)

There is... But it looks like you can only access it in threads created in the general section and not in this Troubleshooting section... At least I have just looked at a thread I started in both places and can see where to mark the problem as 'answered' in the one but not the other! Weird!