2015 RoboRIO Driver Station Frozen?

[TitanBot Coder]

Whenever the driver station is connected to the roboRIO via the USB port, and when communications are up, the Driver Station freezes. We're not able to click on any buttons in the Driver Station but the battery percentage still fluctuates. Inputs from the roboRIO continue to arrive.

We've reimaged the roboRIO and that did not help. This is also a new computer if that helps.

Please help?

[nickmcski]

Have you updated the firmware on the RoboRIO? Also just in case I assume your on windows if you search "event viewer" you can view all the error logs for your computer and its programs, it could be worth a try to see if it will give you more info.

If that doesn't work you can always call NI, they have free technical support for all of build season and can walk you through step by step.

[HaoleBoy]

Having the same problem on a couple of our computers, and it's happened both with USB and Ethernet connections: Driver station will freeze, but battery readings look active and roboRIO COMM light is green.

Also noticed, disconnecting the cable usually revives the driver station, but it locks up when the cable is reconnected.

We've found that going to un-install programs and repairing the Driver Station software typically (but not always) gets things working again.

Anybody else seeing a similar problem?

[TitanBot Coder]

Originally Posted by nickmcski

Have you updated the firmware on the RoboRIO? Also just in case I assume your on windows if you search "event viewer" you can view all the error logs for your computer and its programs, it could be worth a try to see if it will give you more info.

If that doesn't work you can always call NI, they have free technical support for all of build season and can walk you through step by step.

We're currently updating everything, but we're not sure if it'll actually help with anything.

[TitanBot Coder]

Originally Posted by HaoleBoy

Having the same problem on a couple of our computers, and it's happened both with USB and Ethernet connections: Driver station will freeze, but battery readings look active and roboRIO COMM light is green.

Also noticed, disconnecting the cable usually revives the driver station, but it locks up when the cable is reconnected.

We've found that going to un-install programs and repairing the Driver Station software typically (but not always) gets things working again.

Anybody else seeing a similar problem?

We just tried to repair it as well, but it did not work. We're updating some stuff from NI right now. We downloaded the Driver Station onto our old laptop also with Windows 8 and it worked fine. It seems like it's just that one laptop that's having problems.

[Greg McKaskle]

Can you provide me with some details?

Is this reproducible? What are the state of the Communications and Robot Code LEDs when this happens? Can you do this with the Chart tab open on the right to see if that indicates something going on? Is the CPU usage for the FRC DriverStation process high, low, unchanged? What happens if you let it sit for fifteen or thirty seconds?

My guess/fear is that the mDNS stack is taking a long time to do its enumeration and identification. Since this is in an event structure, the panel can become locked waiting for this to complete. To help diagnose this, if you use IE or another browser and type in the roboRIO-team.local as the URL, does this work? Does it take more than a few seconds to start loading the page?

Lots of questions, but I have never seen this and have no way to investigate it without more info.

Greg McKaskle

[HaoleBoy]

Update on ours:
Two of our four computers have this problem intermittently.
- Comp1: Windows 7, used for the last few years, has tons of engineering applications on it. We uninstalled previous
- Comp2: Windows 8.1, brand new, only installed Qt, McAffee, Office, and 2015 FRC software installed (Java, Eclipse, NI software etc...)

Symptoms:
When computer connects to roborio (USB, Ethernet or Wireless) and we bring up the driver station it will look fine; has comm, has Robot Code, CPU usage moving, battery voltage moving.

Then, on the first button press we make on the driver station (Enable, Settings, Logs...anything), it will look like it wants to change to the button...the focus will start to change, then nothing happens. The Driver Station stays on the initial screen, but now nothing is clickable (I called it frozen, we can't even close it). The CPU % and Battery Voltage continue to update. The Status Light on the roboRio is green.

Disconnecting the cables or disabling the wireless typically returns control to the driver station and we can at least close it.

We can't really look at the log files while it is happening because we can't press the button to bring up the screen. But once disconnected we can review them. They look ok for things we think we understand like rioCPU%, PacketLoss, and Voltage.

Regarding Greg's Questions:
Is this reproducible?
- It is intermittent in terms of when it happens. Typically first thing in the morning we will power up and know if the computer is having the problem. The Symptoms are consistent every time.

What are the state of the Communications and Robot Code LEDs when this happens?
- Green and Green.

Can you do this with the Chart tab open on the right to see if that indicates something going on?
- Will try.

Is the CPU usage for the FRC DriverStation process high, low, unchanged?
- Bounces between maybe 15 and 30%

What happens if you let it sit for fifteen or thirty seconds?
- After about a minute, it does react correctly. It will continue to react to a few button presses then freeze again.

To help diagnose this, if you use IE or another browser and type in the roboRIO-team.local as the URL, does this work?
- Yes, but not sure what I am looking for in this.

Does it take more than a few seconds to start loading the page?
- Yes.

It sounds like you might be on the right track with the mDNS which is completely new to me.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Joe Ross]

At a quick build session today, one computer had this symptom until McAffee was disabled.

[HaoleBoy]

Thank you.

When our issues happened we had the 5353 exception in McAfee per the FRC Firewall instructions. We tried completely disabling McAfee Firewall and at this moment haven't seen the issue again.

We'll test a bit more, but fingers crossed that you guys figured it out.

[Greg McKaskle]

Please let us know whether MacAfee seems to have corrected it.

The more detailed symptom description sounds like the majority of the DS is running fine, but the event handling is waiting for the mDNS libraries to complete. Perhaps MacAfee or another tool is interfering.

Thanks for the info thus far. Please update the thread if something changes.

Greg McKaskle

[TitanBot Coder]

We uninstalled McAfee and the Driver Station is working now. Thanks for the help!

[cjl2625]

I've had the same problem.
When I disabled the firewall on McAfee, that seemed to fix it.