How to suspend VMR9 Fullscreen Exclusive?

[Braklet]

My main video archive is at the end of a wireless link. When the network glitches, occasionally PVRX2.exe can lock up.

This isn't a problem with Overlay or VMR9 Custom. I can just rotate Windows Explorer forward via alt-tab and kill the dead PVRX2.exe process.

However, it is a big problem with VMR9 Fullscreen Exclusive. I can find no way to kill or suspend PVRX2.exe to get the PC display back from the dead. The PC is still running, but zombie PVRX2 won't give up the screen.

I am sorry to say that I have resorted to hard reset, but that is just begging for trouble. Anybody know of a way to restart PVRX2?

VMR9 FSE provides the best video performance in my setup, but I've avoided it due to lockup paranoia.

Thanks!

[JohnInSJ]

Not exactly.... but you could run vnc server on it, or use the terminal server built into XP/Vista to remotely connect to the pc and either cleanly shut it down or kill pvrx2. Being able to remotely access the box in some way is always helpful...

Also, somewhere there should be a setting for the power button in XP/Vista (settings/power? I think) - you can set the OS to power down when the power button is pressed (assuming the acpi in your hardware is reasonably good) and you can cleanly shut it down by hitting the power button.

[Braklet]

Not exactly.... but you could run vnc server on it
[...] you can set the OS to power down when the power button is pressed

My HTPC is already running VNC server, but I'd rather not have to fire up the laptop to access it if I can suspend FSE somehow via keyboard.

Also, VNC server shares the same terminal (:0) as the FSE session, so I wonder if zombie PVRX2 locks VNC down as well? Have to try this one out. Maybe I could configure VNC server to use another terminal (:1) if it's a problem.

The power button clean shutdown is certainly better than hard reset.

Thanks for the suggestions.

[dark_half]

I have a batch file that kills pvrx2 and restarts it. I use irserver to map a button on my remote to call it. Surely you could just make a button on the keyboard a shortcut to the batch file or something like that.

[Braklet]

I have a batch file that kills pvrx2 and restarts it. I use irserver to map a button on my remote to call it. Surely you could just make a button on the keyboard a shortcut to the batch file or something like that.

That's a very slick idea! Any chance you could make your batch file available via post attachment?

Normally I kill processes via Process Explorer, so I've ass-u-med that I need GUI access.

TIA!

[varesino]

In windows XP (and probably also in Vista) there is a command line utility called
tskill.exe in windows system32 that fit with your request.

this is the help screen describing how to use it:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>tskill
Invalid parameter(s)
Ends a process.

TSKILL processid | processname [/SERVERervername] [/IDessionid | /A] [/V]

processid Process ID for the process to be terminated.
processname Process name to be terminated.
/SERVERervername Server containing processID (default is current).
/ID or /A must be specified when using processname
and /SERVER
/IDessionid End process running under the specified session.
/A End process running under ALL sessions.
/V Display information about actions being performed.

[Braklet]

TSKILL processid | processname [/SERVERervername] [/IDessionid | /A]

Thanks, varesino. I'm running XP, will play around with tskill.

[dark_half]

Code:

@echo off
pskill PVRX2
sleep 5
psexec -d -u [I]USER[/I] -p [I]PASSWORD[/I] "C:\Program Files\devnz\gbpvr\PVRX2.exe"

The above is all my batch file has in it.
sleep,pskill and psexec are all separte utilities you would need to download from Microsoft.

Pskill worked better for me on Vista do to some permission problems I didn't want to spend the time to figure out. I also use psexec with the -d because it will not wait for the process that it started to end before closeing the cmd window.

[Braklet]

The above is all my batch file has in it.

I appreciate the code snippet, dark_half. Thanks!

I'll probably keep mine simpler, as long as I can kill zombie PVRX2 I can grab the keyboard and restart it manually.

[Braklet]

Here's some information about mapping keyboard shortcuts (e.g. ctrl-alt-whatever) to assets in WinXP.

I'll give this a try with the batch file tips provided in earlier posts.