This application is preventing Windows from shutting down...

[texneus]

I schedule my Win7 SageTV system to reboot nightly. All of a sudden for about the past ~2 weeks the reboot gets hung up with the "This application is preventing Windows from shutting down" grey screen and sits all night until I intervene in the morning. The screen will state SageTV as the offending application but it shows the Java "coffee cup" icon next to it, so I do not know if this is a Sage or a Java issue.

To intervene I cancel the restart and find SageTV is totally locked. No "circle of death", just unresponsive to any and all input and froze on whatever menu it was on last. When I start task manager to kill it, I note the larger of the two SageTV.exe processes has pegged either one or both CPU cores (on a dual core CPU) at 100%. Once I kill SageTV I can restart the computer without issue.

I can reproduce by restarting the computer manually (via the orb) at any time, so it is not my script causing this. I have also noticed if I exit SageTV then open it a second time, SageTV will not hang up and the system restarts normally (via the orb).

I have tried:
Switching Anti-virus from MSE to Avast to removing Anti-virus completely
Downgrading Java to a point well before this was ever an issue (currently have Java 6 release 24 installed, down from release 29)
Switching SageTV to service mode (upon finding no difference, I have since switched back to single mode)
Uninstalling all plugins

NOTHING has made any difference and this is driving me crazy. I'm at my wits end and am ready to re-image the OS and start over. Any other ideas first?

System specs:

System is completely standalone (no extenders) and is a dedicated "appliance" HTPC (meaning, once I got it working I have not made any hardware/software changes except for Windows, SageTV, Java, and AV updates) and the computer has no other purpose other than to run SageTV and TMT3.

Intel e5300 dual core CPU, Gigabyte MB (do not recall model but if someone believes this to be important I will find it), 2GB RAM, NVidia GT240 video, 1TB WD Black drive, Windows 7 x86, MS decoders, Latest beta SageTV (7.1.9 I think?), Colossus HD capture via Motorolla QIP6200-2 STB w/firewire tuning (Verizon FiOS), HD Homerun tuner (1 tuner capturing FiOS Clear QAM, 2nd tuner for OTA).

[KeithAbbott]

You don't specify what technique you are using to restart Windows, but if you are using the Windows shutdown command, there is a -f parameter that does a force shutdown. Might be worth a shot, although that doesn't fix the root cause of the problem...

[texneus]

Originally Posted by KeithAbbott

if you are using the Windows shutdown command, there is a -f parameter that does a force shutdown.

Yes, I am essentially using the shutdown command in a script that first makes sure SageTV isn't recording. This could work as a bandaid (I can also click "force shutdown" on the grey screen) but I am concerned about what this is doing to the wiz.bin. Thus far I have not seen an issue forcing SageTV to close in this state (knock on would), but still it's tempting fate a bit too much for my taste


edit: actually given that concern the proper bandaid is to disable the auto reboot and do it manually. Will do that now...

[KeithAbbott]

Maybe try using the net stop command to first stop the SageTV service, pause a couple of seconds, then issue the shutdown command to reboot Windows? If the net stop command will successfully stop the service without popping up the offending error message, then it shouldn't matter as much if you need to force shutdown windows to reboot, since the wiz.bin file will be closed when the service is stopped.

[texneus]

An interesting thought, but I am not running in service mode. Will edit my original post to that effect.

[ero]

I was experiencing exactly the same just by shutting down Windows 7 via the start menu. If SageTV was running (just the client as I don't use server mode) I'd get that same exact message and then pressing Cancel would show SageTV being hung.

I wrote to support at the time and tried different things like reinstalled display driver, Java, and other drivers but nothing worked. It was eventually said it may be a bug within Java.

The same too was happening with JDownloader which is also a Java application so could be true about the potential Java bug.

In the end, I installed a software package called Windows 7 Manager (not free) and under Optimizer - System Speed - Shutdown there is a setting called "Automatically close non-responsive applications" which I ticked and Windows 7 has shut down properly ever since.

[nyplayer]

Originally Posted by texneus

Yes, I am essentially using the shutdown command in a script that first makes sure SageTV isn't recording. This could work as a bandaid (I can also click "force shutdown" on the grey screen) but I am concerned about what this is doing to the wiz.bin. Thus far I have not seen an issue forcing SageTV to close in this state (knock on would), but still it's tempting fate a bit too much for my taste


edit: actually given that concern the proper bandaid is to disable the auto reboot and do it manually. Will do that now...

Download process.exe and add tour your batch reboot script C:\>process -q SageTV.exe .. that is what I use.


example
restart.bat
process -q SageTV.exe .... This will issue the close command to Sagetv. It wiill wait till Sage closes gracefully. then the shutdown command executes.
shutdown -r -t 10

[texneus]

Sorry folks, life has conspired to prevent me from working on this problem. What I was able to do after seeing Ero's message was a google search on shutdown issues with Java apps...and it does appear there is a bug. Very strange though that it seems to have only just started making things miserable for me.

(example of a bug report I found for another Java app pointing at Java as the cause...)
https://jira.vuze.com/browse/SUP-126

I also tracked down Ero's original post and concur minimizing SageTV before restart seems to be a workaround.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=56027

I've had my script do this before a shutdown and it's been working fine for a few days now. Might also try sending a WMClose message (which is what process.exe will do) as well, but I think since I have Sage set to minimize on exit I think this is probably what it will do anyway. Just need to try. Not a fix but at least a workaround for nightly reboots...