Author Topic: Any Substitutions to WD  (Read 15153 times)

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Offline yamiacaveman

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Any Substitutions to WD
« on: December 26, 2015, 09:34:46 AM »
I am looking for a substitution to Weather Display software.

While I believe Weather Display is a decent program and Brian does a good job with it, I find WD wearing me down.

I have been using it now for 10 years (+-) and for what ever reason it runs great for a while then stops. In another post (today) I awoke to my ftp and data not current -- just stopped working around 4am this morning -- no nothing happened, believe me i was asleep.

This scenario (waking up and something not working) eventually always happens for no reason after sometimes a good run of a year.

Perhaps if I knew more it would npt bother me as much.  It's kind of like getting 3 or 4 flat tires a year.

Any suggestion to a different program?

Using win 10 and  Davis Vantage Pro 2 weather station.

Thanks for your opinion and suggestions.

yamiacaveman

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #1 on: December 26, 2015, 09:58:15 AM »
Probably the best alternative to WD is Cumulus

http://sandaysoft.com/products/cumulus

Offline yamiacaveman

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #2 on: December 26, 2015, 10:37:49 AM »
Thanks -- I will definitely keep this in mind!!!!!

Offline Skywatch

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #3 on: December 26, 2015, 05:57:51 PM »
I've been there and done that with waking up and finding something not working and being too groggy to want to deal with it. :)

There's no guarantee that switching to another program will solve the problem especially if you say it's worked fine for 10 years.

My bet is something in the computer causing issues as well as any problems with the hardware feeding to WD. I've had WD lock up when the hardware was unplugged or in some cases the the data logger itself is loose (Even Davis makes mistakes).

You might try and place a cotton ball behind the logger and close the battery door and then see if the problem persists.

When WD does work, the box below the time display to the right of the rain displays that says "Data quality", does it turn red when WD is running?
I live in an apartment and for the moment am not a home weather watcher.

I am a storm chaser.

Offline Maumelle Weather

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #4 on: December 26, 2015, 06:18:33 PM »
Hi,

I do have a question. Do you have Windows Update turned on for automatic Updates?  If so, turn it off and do them manually. I had a number of issues similar to yours and figured out it was Windows Update causing the problem. I actually have Update turned OFF on my weather machine. Doing that has saved me a lot of grief.

Hope this helps,

John
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Offline yamiacaveman

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #5 on: December 26, 2015, 08:49:46 PM »
Hi sacreyweather and Skywatch,

Well the upgrade to the latest version of WD seems to have corrected the problem.
Thanks for the support and replies --
I know there is a lot that can go wrong -- Davis equipment -Software - my hardware - internet - server, Noaa, NWS, and the rest -- The part that bothers me the most is why at 4:20 this morning did WD just stop working after working just fine for 5 months.
The 2nd part of the breakdown is that a lot of fixing the problem is way beyond my understanding.  Sometimes just describing the problem becomes a problem, then you get asked a question about the problem and you have no idea of what that person is asking. Then the solution just fries my brain even further.
I am so glad that a lot of people on the forums take the time and have the patience to walk me and others through the process – That takes Great people!
Thanks sacreyeather for the tip – I usually do turn all the updates off – I just did the free windows 10 upgrade about a month and a half ago – still kind of waiting for MS to get the majority of bugs out and then I will turn the updates off.
Again thanks for the reply and thanks for understanding my bit of frustration and lack of certain skills.

yamiacaveman

Offline Maumelle Weather

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #6 on: December 26, 2015, 09:10:15 PM »
Hi yamiacaveman,

I hope your version of Windows 10 is the Pro version.  If it is the Home, I don't think you can turn the updates, unless they changed something.
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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #7 on: December 26, 2015, 10:08:02 PM »
No they did not... from what I know it is not possible to turn off auto updates in Win 10 Home unless you try some procedures which we could call "non-standard" - try googling it and you will find some solutions on the web, but probably will not do without a command line, changing registry etc.

I have just visited my sister. She has a tablet with win8, which she wanted to upgrade to win10. It took me 3 days before I successfully accomplished it. It took about a day before I was able to sort out all the errors that were showing up when trying to downoad the upgrade package and starting it.

Then next day was the actual installation. Waiting for about 3 hours, with the progress bar jumping absolutely randomly - being stuck for an hour, then jump 20%. Once I even got to 100% and then after about 10 minutes it changed to 101%...  :grin: :grin:

And then today, another day fully spent with first downloading updates, then installing them, then "preparing them" (no clue what that means in practice).... hopefully it is now ok.

One thing I don't get for example is - they release it in July. Since then, they released several updates and bug fixes. I would assume that those who already installed it will have to do install the updates. But I would assume that those who download the whole thing now, would already have it in the latest version. Well not really. So you download the same buggy file they did in July and then you spend another couple of hours installing the updates of the bugs you have just installed with the main package...

I was originally a bit disappointed my laptop is no longer able to run even XP (because browsers these days have become almost like an OS and there was simply not enough RAM left for the OS, which was unusably slow). But today I must say, I changed my mind and I am quite happy using Lubuntu now, which does not get slow over time, you don't have to worry about viruses, updates install automatically in the background and without any problems within seconds or minutes at most....

Offline Bushman

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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #9 on: December 26, 2015, 10:11:44 PM »
And the best thing is that the updates sometimes even contain information about other updates so you end up in a cycle of updating updates of updates of updates.... I don't want to imagine how long the installation will take in like a year unless they change their strategy :D

Offline Maumelle Weather

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #10 on: December 26, 2015, 10:53:38 PM »
Jachym, you explained the exact reasons I will NOT upgrade my computers to Windows 10. Windows 7 is as far as I am going. If I want a touch screen, my iPad will work fine.
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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #11 on: December 26, 2015, 11:06:25 PM »
It must be said though that I still believe win 10 was an improvement compared to win 8, of course win 7 is a different matter

Offline erikmm

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #12 on: December 27, 2015, 03:22:39 AM »
Been upgrading around 25 of my friends pc's to win 10 without any problem what so ever, running smoothly, no driver issues, no lacking, no problems with updates, no nothing....
Running win 10 on my wife's pc, my daughters pc, my bank pc and my own pc up against my own win server, without any problem.
My weather pc runs win7 after the princip, if it aint broke, don't fix it - and when it breaks down I guess it's going to be a Meteo Pro in stead.
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Offline gwwilk

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #13 on: December 27, 2015, 09:15:19 AM »
My old HP p6230F Pavilion with Win 7 Home Premium errored out when I tried to upgrade to Win 10.  My 95 y/o mother clicked 'OK' after she tired of seeing the 'Upgrade to Windows 10?' link on her similar HP Pavilion.  I received a panic call from her Christmas Eve stating that her computer was broken and all she could get to display was 'this circle thing'.  Sure enough, when I stopped by to check on it, her computer was essentially frozen as if it had been infected by a nasty virus.  I downloaded 'Windows Defender Offline' and took it over on a USB drive, but the HP Pavilion was so old that it had no option to boot from USB.

I burned the 'Windows Defender Offline' onto a CD and booted that on her computer, but this program complained that it couldn't find a valid Windows partition to check.  At one point when I used Windows to check the integrity of her HD, it thought it was corrupt but couldn't repair it!  Hmm...stranger and stranger.  Fortunately I was able to boot into her computer's windows repair partition where I finally selected 'Restore Previous Operating System'.

Restoration of Win 7 returned her computer to its normal functional state!  The aforementioned 'virus' turned out to be Windows 10.  My Pavilion with the failed Windows 10 Upgrade had a corrupt HD that required repair via the Windows Repair Partition that took over 3 hours to complete, but after which the computer is now back to normal.

In order to try to prevent additional Microsoft Windows 10 shenanigans I installed 'GWX Control Panel' that detects attempts to upgrade Win 7 to Win 10.  I've installed this program on all of the computers I don't want upgraded which includes the HP Pavilions as well as the computers running weather programs using VVP.  Just now I discovered that MS had tried to sneak the Win 10 update back aboard my Pavilion, but GWX quashed it with a required reboot to get rid of MS's tampering.

Not all Windows 7 computers can be upgraded to Windows 10!
« Last Edit: December 27, 2015, 09:23:29 AM by gwwilk »
Regards, Jerry Wilkins
gwwilk@gmail.com

Offline Bushman

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #14 on: December 27, 2015, 10:42:30 AM »
Linux baby!  My old PCs (not W10 upgradable) are Linux. :)
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Offline meteo-saint-brevin

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #15 on: December 27, 2015, 11:06:13 AM »
The tray icon inviting to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 is not so easy to remove.
I used this tool which automate the process and it worked fine for my "weather laptop"
http://win10wiwi.com/
Marcel Le Jeune F6DOW - Saint-Brevin-les-Pins - Pays de la Loire - France
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Offline Bushman

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #16 on: December 27, 2015, 11:11:26 AM »
I download the free Win 10  files THEN kill the reminders.  :)
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Offline Jáchym

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #17 on: December 27, 2015, 11:17:01 AM »
It is Sunday, let's have some fun :D







And I would all summarize it like this:


Offline Maumelle Weather

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #18 on: December 27, 2015, 11:18:12 AM »
Good one, Jachym.  Haven't seen that in years!!!! =D> =D>
GR2AE, GR3, Cumulus

Offline Jáchym

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #19 on: December 27, 2015, 11:23:01 AM »
Before I permanently switched to Linux I saw BSOD every 20 minutes when I tried to open more than 2 tabs in Chrome :D

Offline erikmm

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #20 on: December 27, 2015, 01:22:30 PM »
Hehe
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Offline Mtn_man

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #21 on: December 27, 2015, 06:32:18 PM »
A program on a computer (hardware) running an operating system and connected to the power grid stopped responding.

Are you absolutely certain that WD is the one (and only) component of this at fault?

Startwatch http://www.softwx.com/windows/startwatch.html can restart a program that has stopped responding.  A simpler solution than abandoning software you have been running for a decade and going through all hassle of converting to a different program.

Offline yamiacaveman

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #22 on: December 27, 2015, 09:37:38 PM »
Thanks for the reply Mtn__man!

I will certainly take a look at startwatch.

Listen - I am just checking to see if there are any other options. I like WD but I also have had many battles with software. I know there are many components of the master plan that can go bad. Over the years I have bought new routers, new cable modems, new computers, changed isp’s, well you name it and I changed it, only to find that these changes did nothing to stop my problems.
I’m not here to bash WD just looking for choices. It is hard for me to believe, that out of the thousands of people using WD that I am the only person that goes to bed at night with WD working well and then wakes up in the morning only to have it broke. As far as I know I don’t have any ghosts lurking around, elves playing games, or even mice playing with my setup. Then the fun part of trying to get it to work again.

You don’t know how glad I was when I started using the scripts here – this php stuff is great compared to the old, what where they carter lake stuff and wd together. Not only is the php stuff great, the people here that answer your questions are great. It seems that if you have a problem using these scripts, somebody already has the solution, and if not you’ll see threads going around the clock until the problem is fixed. In Wd what does the log file show, I don’t know cause I don’t where it’s at, how to access it, or even how to send it to you, did you check this and that, ah it just seems to go on.

Oh well, I’m done, lol, it just gets old sometimes and fixing it for over 10 years Is a long time.

yamiacaveman

Offline Mtn_man

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #23 on: December 27, 2015, 10:20:17 PM »
In a couple of months I will have had WD running for 11 years, and I have had my own issues with WD, and in hindsight I suspect that many of my problems were self-inflicted.  Brian helped me with many of them.

Several years I serious 'broke' everything uploading to my webpage, got exasperated and just left it down for a good while, as my frustration bit got set.  A year or so later took another look at it and got it all working again (I'm a hardware and network guy, and don't speak HTML very well).

Since then started using Leuven-Template for my webpage.  I'm also running b81 of WD, which I find rock solid, and partially because the newer versions won't run on my OS (Server 2008) without running it in compatibility mode for XP.  Something with the compiler that Brian uses I believe.

Would different software eliminate all this, unknown, plus I have 11 years of data that would need to be converted.

I've also had frustrations with my Davis VP2, with erratic baro sensor and two returns to Davis for repair.

Offline yamiacaveman

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Re: Any Substitutions to WD
« Reply #24 on: December 28, 2015, 07:29:21 AM »
Well, I understand what you are saying but I think our situations are different.
My problems are not self-inflicted. Once I get it working – I let it alone. I can almost guarantee in 6 months’ time something will stop working – not self-inflicted. So I go through a routine of shutting down, starting up, looking for updates, checking this and that, and at every turn waiting for something to happen to make it right again. I will say that about 70% of the time this works, if not, off to the WD forums.
This then presents a second difference, and most likely is the source of MY problem.  I am not a hardware, network, or programing guy. Presently I am a retired lineman for the phone company, ask me to dig a hole, put in a pole, then climb up there and attach a cable, and I’m your guy. I only know what I have struggled to learn over the past 20 years and as I get older – remembering solution to past problems also starts to become an issue.
So now off into the forums – Yes, Brian does a great job of trying to keeps things together and he has also helped me in the past. But, in the process of getting help – I don’t really speak computer, at least you have a background in hardware and networking. So, if Brian were to ask, well are you sure your DHCP is set up correctly, UH? – Again nothing against Brian, I know it’s my problem, but 3 hours later looking up DHCP, trying to figure it out and how it applies to my situation becomes old really quick. The next time you have an issue and use the forums, try this: copy and paste your responses into your google translation software –convert it to let’s say Russian, then use a Russian to English paperback dictionary to come up with your translation and solutions.
So finally, my story is out, lol. All I’m asking is an alternative to WD. In the past 10 years, there have been improvements to all types of products, cars, appliances, computers, software…. But yet after 10 years, I am still trying to figure out why WD stops working. In other words – is there an alternative – Is it time that I switch from Chevy to Ford?