Preventing the opening of another utility when one utility is already running!

Whatever you say/write, boss… :wink:

try
http://www.weather-display.com/downloadfiles/weatherdisplaytest.zip

every hour any cronairquality.exe process running will be killed off (hopefully)
as a test

Test version of Weather Display installed at around 02:00 PST.

What should I check for, what signs am I looking for … other than continuously staring at the screen for hours… :sad11: :shocked!:

Brian, had a the same problem (as mentioned above) earlier today.

Fortunately, when I looked at the screen, only 4 error windows were opened, 2 error windows from the ‘ftpupd.exe’ program and 2 error windows from the ‘cronairquality2.exe’ program.

To be on the safe side, I closed the 4 windows, exited WD and restarted the computer.

I can add the cronairquality2.exe

Brian, when you write “I can add…” do you mean that you have to add code to each/every programs to check if a previous version of that program is already running?

I know, I know, I do not know anything about the code of WD, but, is it not (would it be) possible to add the ‘is-it-already-running’ code into WD just before WD calls (start running) the program?

Although there is (more likely/probably) no relationship between the code used to write WD and the code used to write PHP scripts … with PHP, it is possible to add some code to check if a PHP script is already running and prevent a second copy of that PHP script to start.

But then again, I am just a beginner programmer… :oops:

I do have some code to check what windows programs are running
which I could use
but that will not detect if that program is hung and needs to be killed off
anyway try another test update, same url as above

Brian, if the program has been started and for some reasons is hung, then, in my views, another copy of that program should not be started … unless the program can be killed … and a log entry should be done with the name of the hung program and if the hung program could be killed.

I know I seem to be asking for a lot … but I am trying to make your WD as ‘solid’ and as reliable as possible.

New version downloaded - will be installed in the nest few hours.

Well, it happened again earlier today!

There were (at least) 347 running programs: ‘cronairquality2.exe’, ‘cronopenweathermap.exe’, ‘cronpws.exe’, ‘cronwindycom.exe’, ‘ftpupd.exe’ were mostly all the programs continuously running and trying to open other versions of themselves until there was no memory left - this computer has been running without problem with 24.0GB of RAM memory for at least 5 years.

Is there anything I could check, anything I could test?

Note: I am running exactly the same weather-related programs (ie: Abyss Web Server, FWI, GRLevel3, IPTimelapse, Weather Display, and WXSIM) on another much less powerful computer (same setting for all the programs) without having all those 100s of programs ‘eating up’ all the RAM memory.

I am not sure why you are having this problem
i have not seen other reports of this happening and I have not had it happen here

I could try for a test to check if a program is running before starting a new version

Indeed, this is basically what I have been hinting/suggesting since the beginning…

I do not know why one of the two computers running WD is having this problem … the computer with the problems is the most ‘powerful’ computer (of the two weather computers ) running Windows 10 Pro version 1803 (not the latest update, but the last most reliable update) under an Intel Core i5-2500k @ 3.30 GHz CPU with 24GB RAM - the other computer (the one without problem) is also running Windows 10 Pro version 1803 under an Intel Pentium Dual Core E6600 @ 3.06 GHz CPU with 4GB RAM.

Happened again yesterday - I must have caught the problem early as I only had to close down about one hundred running programs (ie: cronairquality2.exe’, ‘cronopenweathermap.exe’, ‘cronpws.exe’, ‘cronwindycom.exe’, ‘ftpupd.exe’…).

I had hoped that after closing all those running programs I would have been able to check on the memory, but, unfortunately, no other program would run, including Windows task manager, all of them giving the same error message that there was not enough memory left to run the program. Thus, a restart of the computer was required.

I searched the Internet to find out if someone had designed a program that would allow me to shut down duplicate running programs, but, unfortunately, I found no such program.

Since there appear that there is no easy ‘cure’ to my problem, if the problem continues to regularly happen, my only solution will be to permanently close down Weather Display and my web site.

I have carefully read the descriptions of your problem, assuming that you have not yet been able to solve it, I would think of a possible culprit: Windows10 (although I have already read that another PC does not suffer from this problem).
It seems that Windows10 must be a good operating system, but in my case it has created various and very annoying problems (with Windows7 I never had this kind of problem). In my opinion, W10’s policy regarding permissions is not transparent to the user who becomes a hostage of the software he has purchased.

I can think of possible solutions:

  1. Restore the device to an earlier date
  2. Disable Windows10 updates:
    https://www.greatis.com/stopupdates10/
  3. Review the firewall settings
  4. Of course, run the programs as Administrator

Saludos desde San Sebastian (Spain)

Since there appear that there is no easy 'cure' to my problem, if the problem continues to regularly happen, my only solution will be to permanently close down Weather Display and my web site.
I have not had a chance to look at a solution yet People need to remember that I am only 1 person and there is only so many hours in the day and after answering 100's of emails and lots and lots of forum questions and then supporting multiple operating systems and hardware types etc there is actually very little time to do anything else 8O

Hello ‘kocher’ and thank you for the suggestions.

The problem with the ‘multiple opening of the same program’ has been happening once-in-a-while on both computers running Weather Display.

But, over the past two months, the problem has been happening much more often on (only) one of the computers, maybe every 3-4 days.

Both computers operate under Windows 10 Pro. Both computers have the same release (version) number: 1803. Both computers have the same Windows updates. The setting on both computers are almost the same (many of the programs/software are running at the administrator level). Both computers run almost the same programs/software - the computer with the recurring problems also runs the XAMPP server software.

Note: I have stopped the XAMPP software for a few days hoping that would solve the problem - unfortunately, the problem is/was still there, with or without XAMPP, Weather Display was still starting the same group of (weather related) programs over and over … until there was not RAM memory left to start another copy (the computer has 24.0GB of memory installed and available).

For the past two weeks, I have been experimenting with some of the features of System Scheduler Professional (from Splinterware Software Solutions). I have created multiple System Scheduler events to close, the problematic programs (ie: Weather Display, cronairquality2.exe’, ‘cronopenweathermap.exe’, ‘cronpws.exe’, ‘cronwindycom.exe’, ‘ftpupd.exe’…) at a fixed time, twice a day. Then, after a few minutes, System Scheduler restarts Weather Display. So far, over the past week, Weather Display did not have a chance to start multiple copies of the same program.

Brian, I was hoping that you could find a solution … but I was also, not expecting that an easy solution could/would be found.

Brian, I know that you are only one person trying to fulfill the demands of many users, and I know that there are more important things in your life than spending hours and hours just answering eMail messages. That is the reason I stopped reporting on the problem.

Had I not been able to circumvent the problem using the System Scheduler events, indeed, I would have stopped Weather Display and closed my weather web site … I had nothing to loose … at 72 (years old) with a ‘shorten’ patience, I have (and can find) better things to do with my life then watch over a ‘temperamental’ computer.

[quote]Si no hubiera podido eludir el problema usando los eventos del Programador del sistema, de hecho, habr

I will see about implementing a check to see if the program is already running and so not spawn a new one
should be easy to test too (i.e I mimick the problem)
I should be able to work on this over the coming days

Hello ‘kocher’.

I guess I did not expressed myself clearly… :?

Weather Display does NOT have any problem executing/starting any *.exe files (such as, for example, ‘cronairquality2.exe’, ‘cronopenweathermap.exe’, ‘cronpws.exe’, ‘cronwindycom.exe’, ‘ftpupd.exe’…).

The problem is that Weather Display (for the time being) does not check if a program (such as, for example, ‘ftpupd.exe’) is already running and then starts, a few seconds later another copy of the same program (such as ‘ftpupd.exe’).

If, for example, Weather Display runs a program (such as ‘ftpupd.exe’) every 10 seconds, an hour later, there will be 360 copies of the same program running (that is, 360 copies of ‘ftpupd.exe’ running).

Since Weather Display probably runs a half dozen (or more) programs every minutes, after a few hours of running the same programs over and over, then the RAM memory becomes full/saturated and no more program can be started … until the computer is rebooted.

Brian, I do hope you will be able to figure out a way for Weather Display to check if a program is already running before starting anothere copy of itself. As I suggested previously in this message thread, if possible, Weather Display, could make an entry into one of the log files and permanently prevent the program from running again, that is, until Weather Display is shut down and re-started. I do not know if it would be a good idea for Weather Display to open an error window explaining the situation and keep that window open until Weather Display is shut down and re-started.

I have seen 2 or 3 instances of ftpupd.exe running at the same time all doing different jobs, so only allowing 1 copy running means some things would not get uploaded
what I do notice is that the examples you quote are all accessing the internet to either download or in the case of ftpupd upload and will not close if they are unable to carry out the required function, to me this points to a internet connection problem on that particular computer
are there any send files created for the examples and what’s in them

I was not intending to limit the ftpupd.exe program
I think Robs problem is something about his internet/firewall/router
there is something blocks those programs at times
something either on the pc or with the internet connection/router or similar