Winamp freezes when downloading/updating specific Podcasts

[2072]

This is not specific to the latest version (5.61). I tried to install previous versions to find the cause of those freezes.
Note that those freezes can also be 'partial': Winamp will just use 50% of the CPU constantly but will continue to work.
In the latest case, you cannot exit Winamp, the main window will close but the winamp.exe process will stay in memory still using 50% of the CPU and some times 100% until you kill the process.


This is one of the faulty podcast:
http://radiofrance-podcast.net/podcast09/rss_11188.xml

(Host page: http://www.franceculture.com/podcast/2609241 )

[2072]

Other podcast are affected now.... this is really annoying.

Is there a workaround?

[2072]

bump...

the only way to temporarily 'fix' the problem is to replace the files podcasts.dat et podcasts.idx by older backups... loosing downloaded podcast metadatas...

Am I the only one having this problem?

I'm using Windows7 64bit

[Batter Pudding]

I find Winamp freezes as it finishes any podcast download. On my Vista 64bit OS, when Winamp completes the download of a podcast it will freeze the application for 10-30 seconds. While this happen, the skin breaks and the Aero Glass of Vista appears instead.

Winamp ALWAYS recovers for me. So I am used to just waiting for it to sort itself out.

I assumed it was a delay as the temp file was renamed and moved over to the destination ready for use.

I have been blaming this on my OS though as it is on its last legs and needs wiping and reinstalling. I am having other odd disk errors/OS/lagging and it is time to dump Vista and replace with Win7.

[2072]

It happens on a daily basis now, I've set up an automatic backup of the podcast database related files (see my previous post) so I replace them and relaunch Winamp.

I've made a minidump of Winamp.exe while in the 50% cpu state using ProcessExplorer.

http://www.j2072.teaser-hosting.com/...inamp-mini.zip

(by the way, uploading through the forum was impossible, 'internal server error', the file is just 700 Kib...)

I will reply if you ask for specific datas, I'm ready to spend some time to help you resolve this.

I'll upload the unusable podcasts.dat and podcasts.idx next time.

btw, thanks Batter Pudding for replying, I feel a little less lonely

[Batter Pudding]

A year or two back there was a problem with the podcast xml files. feeds.xml and rss.xml (in the %appdata%\winamp\ml\ folder). These used to get corrupted on odd occasions and needed replacing from backups. That bug was fixed in one of the newer releases.

That would cause the databases to corrupt. I doubt this is related though...

-+-+-+-

Just fired up Winamp. It downloaded a new podcast. And no freeze at all. So the freeze and corrupted GUI does not happen to me every time.

I have just scrubbed my PC clean of about a ton of dust and muck. Full internal strip down, fan clean, muck removal. Will bring my temps back down again. Doubt this is related.

=+=+=+

What COULD be related is something I have been thrashing around in a different thread about. amillionbytes and I have been chasing an odd bug he was getting when ripping tracks on his Win7 PC. ( http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?t=329422 )

After a lot of experiment on his side, it looks like his "skipping rips" was traced to Windows 7 and the way it wants to keep cataloguing music tracks in the My Music folder so it can advertise these on the network using DNLA.

I wonder if this is a similar problem for you? Change the location your podcasts are downloaded to. Make is something away from the standard user folders. For example, make a fresh folder for testing and call it c:\podtest\ and download some podcasts to that location instead.

(Once downloaded, you can always move them into your Windows Music folder and add them back to Winamp's library)

I am wondering if you are seeing the same issue.... yeah, it is a long shot, but I am now curious.

[2072]

It happened again this morning

Here are the damaged pod-casts 'databases' (if it's what they are)

http://www.j2072.teaser-hosting.com/...dcasts-idx.zip

and feeds.xml + rss.xml:
http://www.j2072.teaser-hosting.com/...ml_rss-xml.zip

I had to put back those (podcasts.dat and podcasts.idx) of yesterday morning, the file in place were dated from yesterday 8p.m. so they got damaged after downloading podcasts, the problem appears when Winamp wants to update.
(If I block Winamp from accessing the network, the 50% CPU bug doesn't happen until I let it access to the network again).

@Batter Pudding: I've just tried to replace feeds.xml and rss.xml by an older backup but the podcasts.idx and .dat still gets corrupted once all podcasts have been re-downloaded.
Today I've tried with different backups up to the day before yesterday but once winamp re-re-re-downloaded the files already on the disk the podcasts.dat and podcasts.idx were corrupted and Winamp was using 50% of CPU doing nothing...

The only way to fix this was to set all already downloaded files to read-only so Winamp couln't re-download them again (This is another bug in my opinion: failing to detect the file was already downloaded...)

I do not use the default windows7 download folder and index is disabled on the target disk.

I think that the problem lies in the podcast plugin which fails to write to its database in certain conditions... I didn't have this problem before and it's been several years now, my system did not change, I'm still using Comodo as security software.
The only thing that changed is the size of the podcasts' database...

Next time I will trace what happens to those podcats db usin process monitor.
I've already noticed that Comodo is also accessing to the podcast db (probably because Winamp is accessing it). Maybe it's a race condition that Winamp fails to handle (ie: a write fails because the file is opened by comodo but Winamp doesn't test if the write succeeded and thus corrupt its own files...).

I found this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3...te-to-complete Maybe Winamp suffers from the same issue.

[Batter Pudding]

Tell Comodo to stop monitoring those Winamp file. Pop the whole %appdata\winamp branch into a comodo exception. I have seen anti-virus programs cause strange interfering problems, and comodo can be a little weird at times.

If the podcast system was broken, a lot more people would be complaining in here. So it will be a combination of issues causing this for you.

[2072]

Ok, I've made a Process Monitor log starting from a normal situation (downloading updated Pod-casts at normal CPU load up to the end of the download when CPU jumped to 50%):

http://www.j2072.teaser-hosting.com/...e50pCPUbug.zip

nothing strange in it, we can see Comodo accessing the files a few seconds after Winamp accessed/write to them but they never got into conflcts.

Tell Comodo to stop monitoring those Winamp file. Pop the whole %appdata\winamp branch into a comodo exception. I have seen anti-virus programs cause strange interfering problems, and comodo can be a little weird at times.

Only Winamp is having problems on my system, my system runs 24h/24h (it's been 8 days since the last time I had to restart it because of Windows Update) and I'm not gentle with it, I use many complex applications that are much more intensive than Winamp when it comes to file writes without any issues.
Besides only the Podcasts module is having issues, the rest of winamp is working great.

I think it's related to the size of my podcast db: I have 3071 tracks.
maybe it's the database itself that is damaged but if I reset it I lost all PodCasts meta-data (ie: the RSS media library Icon will be empty)

I'm not using the Anti-Virus feature of Comodo, just the Defense+ and the Firewall. I've tried to exclude this folder from the AV but it had no effect and there is no way to exclude files from Defense+.

If the podcast system was broken, a lot more people would be complaining in here. So it will be a combination of issues causing this for you.

I have a lot of subscriptions, it was working great for me too for the past 2 years... until a few months ago!