#233 Furthur 1.7.4 crashed my computer
My name is Tad Lusk, tlusk@usc.edu. A few days ago I
downloaded the new version of Furthur 1.7.4. I have a
Sony Vaio desktop PC with Windows XP. Don't know how
much RAM is on my PC, but I have a DSL internet
connection, through a router I share with two other
guys, which I believe has some sort of firewall
(whenever I was plugged into the router, Furthur always
said I was running through a firewall, regardless of
whether opened the listening port) Anyways, I had
Furthur for a few days, and had been slowly
downloading a few Phish shows (all were still
downloading). It was pretty slow so I followed the FAQ
directions to open the listening port through the
Firewall. Last night I opened my web browser, with
Furthur open, the computer stopped responding and
froze up. Then it brought up the screen that
said "hibernating..." with a little progress bar at which
point it crashed, and when I tried to restart it, it would
NOT restart after numerous attempts. Then I called the
Sony Customer support service and was talked through
numerous different ways to try and start up the
computer, none worked, and the representative told me
the only possible solution was to use the System
Recovery Disks and reformat the computer, which I did.
Of course I lost all previous data. Luckily, however I had
all my music on a D Drive, which was not lost, thank
goodness. But I did lose everything saved on my C hard
drive. I know there was a warning on the website about
Beta software possibly causing crashes, but figured you
guys should know about this, so that hopefully this
won't happen to other people. I don't know if these
kinds of crashes are common due to Furthur, or if I'm
just really unlucky, but thought you should know that
this is a very big problem with the software it seems. Is
there any chance a non-Beta version of Furthur might
be made available later on? I was really excited when I
found out about Furthur, and couldn't wait to start
sharing shows since I absolutely love live music (and it's
a lot harder to get Phish shows anywhere else!), but
now I'm afraid to try it again, as it might crash my
computer again. Any help or answers you could give
would be much appreciated, thanks - Tad Lusk
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Tad:
Thanks for your report, and we're really sorry to hear that
it happened.
I don't think that there's anything we can tell you that
would be helpful to you. Although Furthur is beta software,
it's been running now for many years, and it has never
caused the sort of problem you described. It's core is Java
developed by Sun Microsystems, which is probably used on 10
million computers worldwide, and certainly doesn't cause
system crashes like that -- although Java sometimes crashes
or freezes up, it's the sort of thing that a reboot solves.
It's possible that running Furthur overheated your PC or a
hard drive, or something like that, but even then, the
result would most likely be either temporary (fixed by a
restart) or permanent (if your PC is fried, it's fried).
So, our intuition is that your system crash was coincidental
to installing Furthur, and something at the operating system
level.
Some advice, if you haven't done these things already: use
Windows update to keep your XP up to date, at least through
SP2. Use Spybot and Adaware to keep your PC clean, too.
Spyware that messes with your registry could cause system
crashes. And, finally, please don't be put off trying
again. Furthur runs fine for thousands of people, and it
should run fine for you, too. Good luck!