Hundreds of "Watchdog Expiration: System X" Errors

[Greg McKaskle]

Can you describe the situations that provoke this? What processes are running? What tab is frontmost on the DS? Is the dashboard also visible? Is Vision displaying in the dashboard? What account was logged in?

Greg McKaskle

[lollypop2020]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Please use the search function. You will find that NI is already working on resolving this - it is not your fault. It is a bug in the current software.

I did search first, but most of the threads I found were for people getting a few expirations here and there, not the hundreds I am seeing.

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

Can you describe the situations that provoke this? What processes are running? What tab is frontmost on the DS? Is the dashboard also visible? Is Vision displaying in the dashboard? What account was logged in?

Greg McKaskle

It happens whenever the robot is enabled. I even tried taking all code out of the teleop enabled state, but the expirations still happen. I don't have the DS with me at the moment, but I can find out more about what processes are running tomorrow afternoon. The DS and Dashboard work fine, as does vision. I honestly wouldn't have known anything was going on were it not for the hundreds of system watchdog expiration errors in the diagnostic tab and the periodic flickering of the RSL and Jaguar LEDs. I was logged into the driver account only.

[BLProgram2010]

We're having the exact same problem, and every time we enable the robot, there is a 'watchdog not feed' message and the robot won't respond to the joysticks. Please help!!!!!

[Greg McKaskle]

Watchdog not fed messages will normally indicate that the code is not feeding the watchdog. This could be because there is a loop or slow operation in the Teleop or Autonomous Iterative method.

Does this happen with teleop, auto, both?

Greg McKaskle

[lollypop2020]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

Watchdog not fed messages will normally indicate that the code is not feeding the watchdog. This could be because there is a loop or slow operation in the Teleop or Autonomous Iterative method.

Does this happen with teleop, auto, both?

Greg McKaskle

I used the totally unchanged new project code that was working perfectly a few days ago. I also tried taking all the code out of the teleop method, but the system watchdog still expired rapidly. This happened in both auto and teleop, but only when enabled.

I called NI today, and spoke to someone for quite a bit who was unable to figure out what was wrong. We went through all the troubleshooting steps, but she said that it was beyond her knowledge and that unless I talked to R&D, there was nothing I could do unless the upcoming update fixes it.

[Tom Line]

FYI - we are also seeing this on a heavily modified project. Literally hundreds.

[BLProgram2010]

I'm having the exact same problem, Do you know if there is anyway to fix it?

[Tom Line]

NI is looking into it. It's a bug, but so far it hasn't impacted how our robot actually functions. It's just annoying seeing error messages when we don't think we have errors

[lollypop2020]

I tried installing the DS and Dashboard software on a desktop computer to see if that would improve anything, amazingly enough our system watchdog expirations completely stopped happening. It's good that we have something to work with until the next update, but still rather frustrating that the classmate doesn't work.

With the classmate, I decided to completely start over from scratch. I got out the recovery flash drive, and completely reinstalled windows. I installed the labview update and installed/uninstalled the DS update until it worked. Even after doing all that, re-imaging the cRIO and still using a completely 100% unchanged project, we are still getting the hundreds of errors. It makes me inclined to think that something is actually wrong with our classmate, but I'm not sure.

[Greg McKaskle]

Is it possible that you are fast user switching and running the DS in both driver and developer accounts?

If not, let me sound like an optometrist for a minute to see if we can discover what is causing this.

Log into the classmate DS as developer. Note that means booting with shift key down or exiting the DS in driver first. Run the driver station from the Start menu. Open the task manager from a right click on the task bar.

If the system watchdogs are occurring, what is the CPU load? Does this get better or worse if you plug in the stop button? Does it get better or worse on a particular DS tab? If you click the button on the dashboard video to halt the video, better or worse? Go ahead and close the DB, better or worse.

If one of these makes the situation significantly different, please post the results.

Greg McKaskle

[Tom Line]

We'll check that tomorrow, and also check it on another computer. We'll compare classmate driverstation account, developer account, and then that other computer, and tell if you we get any significant differences.

[lollypop2020]

Originally Posted by Greg McKaskle

Is it possible that you are fast user switching and running the DS in both driver and developer accounts?

If not, let me sound like an optometrist for a minute to see if we can discover what is causing this.

Log into the classmate DS as developer. Note that means booting with shift key down or exiting the DS in driver first. Run the driver station from the Start menu. Open the task manager from a right click on the task bar.

If the system watchdogs are occurring, what is the CPU load? Does this get better or worse if you plug in the stop button? Does it get better or worse on a particular DS tab? If you click the button on the dashboard video to halt the video, better or worse? Go ahead and close the DB, better or worse.

If one of these makes the situation significantly different, please post the results.

Greg McKaskle

I am very sure that I haven't been fast user switching, I only ever use one account at a time and make sure the other one is logged off.

When I run the DS and Dashboard in developer, interestingly enough, I get significantly less system watchdog expirations, but still more then if I use a completely different computer. It goes down to about 3 or 4 every 5 seconds rather then the 5-6 per second I was getting when in the driver account.

In task manager, when the DS is running the CPU is always at 100%. The DS usually uses 50-60% the Dashboard uses 10-20% and something called mscorsvw.exe uses whatever is left. Occasionally another process will use a bit of CPU, but nothing unusually high.

Amazingly enough, after a few minutes, mscorsvw.exe went away and the watchdog expirations almost completely stopped. I still get one when switching tabs or windows, but that is much more acceptable then what I was getting before. However, this was with no vision and a e-stop button plugged in. When I turned vision back on, and used the override for the stop button, the number of errors went way back up.

[Greg McKaskle]

That process is something related to Microsoft .NET compilation. I'm not sure why it is acting the way it is, but perhaps you can google it and figure out what to install or reconfigure.

Edit: I found a number of articles that indicate this is usually caused by a visual studio install. There were several approaches that seemed to correct it including this one.

Kusok wrote:
Well, I don't know why do you do all this insane stuff to stop the process. You can just go to Control Panel/Administrative tools/services and stop the optimization service(which is the first in the list) and set it to manual start.

Greg McKaskle