Topic: StartWatch 0.7.0 Release

[W3DRM]

How well does startwatch work with VWS? Does it restart the app. if it locks up? Just wondering if any of you had experience with that. I can almost guarantee a lockup after about 3-4 weeks and sometimes I don't catch it. This would be really nice to have so I don't have to check to make sure it's running all the time.  

Well, I can't say enough good things about StartWatch. If it weren't for StartWatch, I would have to manually watch VWS on a continuous basis. Over a period of 1 to 3 days, VWS slowly increases in CPU Usage until it reaches the 98%+ level after which the PC becomes more and more sluggish. StartWatch detects this and restarts VWS without any problems at all. For me, it's become the best thing since sliced bread...  

[Anole]

How well does startwatch work with VWS? Does it restart the app. if it locks up? Just wondering if any of you had experience with that. I can almost guarantee a lockup after about 3-4 weeks and sometimes I don't catch it. This would be really nice to have so I don't have to check to make sure it's running all the time.  

It seems to handle this very well. I've had my WX PC up "soaking" StartWatch for 13 days and 15 hours and the logs show one instance of VWS crashing and restarting exactly as advertised. All the testing (manually shutting down VWS and others etc) with the latest version shows it working properly as well.

I have to give it the Anole Gold Seal of Approval (tm)!  

[capeweather]

Scweet! Thanks guys. Just the information I was looking for. I'm going to download and try it out sometime tonight. I was hoping that it would work and I'm glad there is finally a solution to the VWS lock up problem.

[Dragonfly]

How well does startwatch work with VWS? Does it restart the app. if it locks up? Just wondering if any of you had experience with that. I can almost guarantee a lockup after about 3-4 weeks and sometimes I don't catch it. This would be really nice to have so I don't have to check to make sure it's running all the time.  

Besides the praises from W3DRM and Anole   I have to give StartWatch Five Stars managing every application assigned as if I was manually controlling them, rest assured capeweather, you can not go wrong with it.

[capeweather]

Thanks again for that. It's definitely getting loaded tonight. Somebody should tell all the people on Ambients forum about it but I don't know how well that would go over with them. That seems to be the #1 complaint about the software. This is going to be really nice and I finally won't have to keep checking on my PC.  

[tinplate]

Thanks for the nice words about StartWatch.

I don't think weather program authors should be threatened by StartWatch or even VirtualVP for that matter. StartWatch won't turn anyone away from VWS, but if StartWatch helps deliver a robust 24x7 weather PC, it might keep people from moving away from VWS or whatever else they're running. VWS is a complex program, and with increased complexity comes a diminishing of robustness. That's just way things usually work out with software. It's not a knock against the author.

VirtualVP should be even less a threat. In fact, it should be just the opposite.  I'm pretty confident it has resulted in a net increase in the purchases of weather software.

Steve

[Dragonfly]

Somebody should tell all the people on Ambients forum about it but I don't know how well that would go over with them. That seems to be the #1 complaint about the software. This is going to be really nice and I finally won't have to keep checking on my PC.  

I just did, hope John has not banned me from the Forum.

Interesting, Not banned yet but the URL I posted has been modified removing Steve's Domain  to http&...watch.html link is still good though.

[W3DRM]

I agree, weather program authors should not feel threatened by any of Steve's products. However, those who monitor and control the weather forums may take a narrow view of such "add-on" software as being non-sanctioned and thus a threat to their existance. We can only hope that the mentioned forum moderator won't take these valuable packages as a threat to him or the company he represents.

While StartWatch does "mask" the problems I have experienced with VWS, it allows me to continue to use it so my weather updates continue to occur on a reliable schedule.

VPLive also takes care of the shortcomings of VWS (VWSaprs.exe) by correcting for barometric measurements at high altitudes. Since I started running VPLive, my CWOP barometer quality problems have simply disappeared as was predictd by members of this forum.

[SLOweather]

I just did, hope John has not banned me from the Forum.

Interesting, Not banned yet but the URL I posted has been modified removing Steve's Domain  to http&...watch.html link is still good though.

That's some feature WXWP added to the forum. Among other things, it shortens up long URLs so they don't screw up page formatting.

[weatheroz]

Somebody should tell all the people on Ambients forum about it but I don't know how well that would go over with them. That seems to be the #1 complaint about the software. This is going to be really nice and I finally won't have to keep checking on my PC.  

I just did, hope John has not banned me from the Forum.

Dear sweet little jonny-boy wouldn't ban anyone from that forum would he ? It's not like he's banned people for disagreeing with him before !!

At least StartWatch will keep your weather site going by getting around that bug with vws, by stopping and restarting it.

[weatheroz]

I agree, weather program authors should not feel threatened by any of Steve's products. However, those who monitor and control the weather forums may take a narrow view of such "add-on" software as being non-sanctioned and thus a threat to their existance. We can only hope that the mentioned forum moderator won't take these valuable packages as a threat to him or the company he represents.

According to emails that I have received from Ed Edelman after being banned from that forum, that forum is NOT official and is jonnyboy does not represent ambient in any way shape or form, which to me implies that someone who solely runs vws has no right for access to that forum, heck you can't even read the forums without 'permission', i.e. signing up. One of the reasons given to others regarding my banning was that all of my posts were irrelevant rubbish just to boost my post count, but I think he was confused with someone else in there.

While StartWatch does "mask" the problems I have experienced with VWS, it allows me to continue to use it so my weather updates continue to occur on a reliable schedule.

Yep, that's the most important thing to have, some sort of stability in order to keep your website up to date. A bit like several of us having to go out and buy a package called WebDrive to "mask" the problem many of us were having with ftp'ing our data to our websites.

I think StartWatch is a great utility.

[capeweather]

Yep, that's the most important thing to have, some sort of stability in order to keep your website up to date. A bit like several of us having to go out and buy a package called WebDrive to "mask" the problem many of us were having with ftp'ing our data to our websites.

Oz, I bought webdrive myself which is a great piece of software. It has helped my stability a lot but I still get the occasional lockup. I went from locking up every few days using VWS's built-in FTP (which i think is slow and unreliable) to about once per month. Even though once a month is still pretty good I still want to maximize my uptime and not find my PC locked up for several hours and data not updating my site. This is where I think startwatch will be handy because I'm not here all the time to catch it when it goes down. I'd be curious to hear how long some VWS owners have been running without rebooting using Startwatch. The longest I've gone is about 35 days without using it so I can only imagine how long I would be able to stay online with it installed.  

[Mark / Ohio]

.....I'd be curious to hear how long some VWS owners have been running without rebooting using Startwatch. The longest I've gone is about 35 days without using it so I can only imagine how long I would be able to stay online with it installed.  

I wish StartWatch was around back when I was running the VWS V12's.  I could not go more tha 1-7 days with them without the cpu usage bringing things to a crawl.  V13 is working better than any so far.  I never did have much ftp problems but I'm only downloading and uploading once an hour.  Moving from V12 to V13 was the worst thing.  Ended up having to start from scratch on all my settings and could not backup to V12.  At first I thought it was a burp on my end or something I messed up when I made the backup but I've seen some other post later on with similar issues.  It never fails to amaze me how the same program can operate so differently from one computer to the next.  I can only imagine what the software authors must go through fighting problems like that.  

Kind of like me running something in the shop for three weeks with no trouble showing up than the customer brings it back within an hour of taking it home, reads me the riot act that I did not even check it.  

Some days I wish I was Amish and did not believe in using electrical appliances.  But it's too late for that now.  I'm hooked on electricity.    

[capeweather]

Mark, I havent stepped up to 13 yet because of all the issues I've heard like the ones you mentioned. I'm currently running 12.08 p11 and it's been the most stable out of all the other 100 versions I've tried. Needless to say those all got pitched in the recycle bin and burned in the incinerator.   Have been fairly happy with this version. I update my data every 5 minutes so this may be a reason why it locks up but in most cases it's been the FTP malfunctioning. Since webdrive it's been much better. I don't plan on upgrading anytime soon just to say I have it. Have to stick with what works.   Anyhow, I was wondering what users of startwatch have there settings configured for? I just installed it and it seems to be working. I just closed some applications and they started right up which was very cool. Memory leakage? What should that be set to roughly? 150MB?

Chris

[Mark / Ohio]

..... I was wondering what users of startwatch have there settings configured for? I just installed it and it seems to be working. I just closed some applications and they started right up which was very cool. Memory leakage? What should that be set to roughly? 150MB?

Chris

I'm using 80Mb with V13p20.  Most of the time it runs under 50Mb unless I'm in the settings making changes or manually doing ftp transfers to change something on the website.  But V12's tend to use more memory for me along with the cpu issues.  What I did was add about 10Mb to the VM usage after 24 hours then wait to see what happens.  Opening windows and changing settings along with ftp seems to be what kicks up the peak VM usage.

In StartWatch Status window if you highlight VWS then right click, then select in the popup menu "Statistics", it will give you a peak value to work with for starters.  That's a handy feature Steve's added on the later versions.  I originally used Task Monitor or Process Explorer to get my original rough settings for my programs.

[W3DRM]

...I was wondering what users of startwatch have there settings configured for?

I have StartWatch set up as follows:

VWS - 90MB

VPLive - 8MB

VirtualVP - 6MB

All processes including WD are set to detect Hangs, Crashes, and CPU Hog conditions.

These values have been derived after tweaking them for the past few weeks and at the moment are the levels I need them set to for stable operations. VWS is still slowly increasing in CPU Usage over 1 to 2 days before it reaches the 98%+ level and StartWatch restarts it automatically.