ERROR Worker Thread Died

[scsigirl]

Since upgrading to nb651B5, newsbin keeps hanging.

Resetting all connections has no effect and queued header downloads remain in the download window never starting.

Today I upgraded to nb652 and it's still hanging. The last message in the logging tab is ERROR Worker Thread Died.

I haven't been able to download anything for weeks now, been forced to use torrents instead.

Not a happy camper

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

ps. Once it's in it's hung state, the close X and File,Exit commands have no effect and I have to use TaskMgr to close it.

[Quade]

What security software do you use? Oddball problems are mostly caused by them. This problem is pretty oddball.

In the past, I've suggested people remove their V scanners, reboot, then try some downloads. If it works, I'd find a different security package.

[scsigirl]

Thank you for the quick reply.

That's a good place to start, I disabled Avast and that got me thinking about other system level stuff.

I discovered the swap page size had been fixed at some point, so changed it to system managed, rebooted and defragging all my drives (4) now.

I'll report back when all is done and Newsbin has been running for a while.

Adrienne

[Quade]

Disabling doesn't typically work because the V scanners are embedded inside windows. That's why I suggest remove and reboot.

Avast has caused many issues in the past.

[scsigirl]

ok. I'm hoping fixing the paging file size will fix it, but if newsbin hangs again I will remove it.

[scsigirl]

After removing a boat load of malware, Newsbin seems to be working again. Avast is still installed but disabled.
Hopefully my auto filters will resume catching my weekly shows before they get pulled.
Thanks again for your help and I'll let you know if anything changes.

[scsigirl]

Alas, after removing Avast, Newsbin was still hanging. I also noticed system performance hampered by rubyw.exe (PrivateInternetAccess) which I use while torrenting on the same pc. When I killed rubyw, Newsbin runs as expected. Clicking on NZB files is working again, and previously has been causing Newsbin to hang as well.

Any suggestions for making Newsbin work with PIA ?

[Quade]

I'd want to know why it's messing with other programs. That sounds pretty malware like.

[bertgt]

edit: added why I replied to this topic at the bottom

Hi.

If someone (like me) were to read this thread at face value, I'd ask the following questions first:

1. How did you manage to get filled with malware in the first place? May I politely (and somewhat arrogantly) suggest changing your Internet browsing habits to avoid malware, the corollary of which is:
2. Why do you need (or think you need) to use a VPN service like PIA? If you're using a VPN service to hide your behaviour, again I'd suggest changing your internet browsing habits.

Never mind, My questions are rhetorical.

What will probably help here is using an OpenVPN client to connect to PIA's servers. This avoids the use of their tray app which spawns problematic rubyw processes, which probably causes more issues with AVAST than Newsbin does, and are often flagged as malware by antimalware programs.

This is talked about at length on the following thread:
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/f ... byw-exe/p1

In that post is a reference to their client support page:
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/p ... t-support/

Go there, and look for the instructions on setting up with Windows OpenVPN client. Why? Because PIA's technology is all based on open source OpenVPN, and it's more likely that the OpenVPN' client will be allowed by antimalware programs than the PIA client(s).

With any luck, you'll be connecting up to PIA with a more robust client that will cause less issues with the windows network stack, and less issues with your antivirus/antimalware programs.

Option two would be to set up OpenVPN on your router, though that's another barrel of fish. It would be preferable to running any sort of client on your computer, but if it goes wrong you'd lose internet access until you disabled it on your router again.

Hope this helps

PS I use peerblock in conjunction with the free Microsoft security essentials and I've never really ever had any problems on any of my desktops/laptops. Then again I don't go looking for trouble on the internet. YMMV.

PPS I have a fair bit of experience with OpenVPN stuff which is why I took the time to post. I don't use PIA (or any other type of VPN software) for general internet use, but have used it as part of general networking.

[scsigirl]

Thank you for your informative post and OpenVPN suggestion, Newsbin continues to work smoothly with it.

Perhaps malware wasn't the right choice of words. The boatload I referred to was from a handful of trial programs I installed the week before while trying to accomplish a specific task, all of which have been removed. Probably not malicious in nature, but undesirable background tasks that use more system resources than I care to give them (including rubyw), and so considered "malware" in my eyes.

Everything is running smoothly again.

[scsigirl]

Not as smoothly as I thought...

Since my last post, Newsbin continues to hang, regularly. I've been trying different things, all to no avail.

I recently noticed that once it's hung, the Import folder is chuck full of .gz files, one for every group that is enabled. I've noticed that when Newsbin is running properly, these .gz files are deleted as they are processed.

This problem started after my upgrade from nb642.exe to nb651B5.exe I'm at 6.52 build 3289 now.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Adrienne

[bertgt]

Try adding an exclusion in your antivirus settings to the folder (s) these .gz files are appearing in.
What this does is tell your virus scanner to skip scanning diles in just this folder .

[Quade]

Well, I'd use the newest version first. The version is listed at the top and should be 6.53.

GZ files are downloaded headers waiting to process. I suspect the hang might be a corrupt group.

[scsigirl]

Shortly after my last post, I did upgrade to the latest version.
I tried downloading headers in small batches and narrowed it down to a handful of groups that were hanging newsbin. I tried downloading ALL headers for those groups, one by one and newsbin still hung, leaving unprocessed .gz files in the Import folder. Restarting newsbin had no effect on the leftover .gz files either.

During my testing, I realized this all started after I added a second server eu.bintube.com. Before that, I had only been using the us.bintube.com server. Restoring my settings to a point where I only had the us server defined got everything working properly again, right alongside my vpn.

So needless to say, I'll be running with just the US server from now on but I'm happy happy to have everything running smoothly again.

Thanks for all the assistance.

Adrienne

[Quade]

How about running the other server but, not downloading headers from it? You can disable headers in the server options.

[scsigirl]

I've added the EU server back with header download disabled and fired it up to download all headers while I'm out today.

Will report back when I have something worthy of reporting, which could be a while since I reset that handful of large groups.

[Quade]

Hmm you know you almost never have to "Download all Headers"?

All the headers from all servers should be the same so, you can use one good server to download headers from. Newsbin stores the headers and you can then use them on any server on the internet. You don't need to have headers from more than one good server. The only time you need headers from multiple servers is if both servers aren't very good and you want to combine headers together from more than one server.

[scsigirl]

I'll keep that in mind next time I add a new server.

After you suggested that I had a corrupt group, I started downloading headers in small batches until I found a handful of groups that never got processed (in the Import folder). So I did a "download all headers" on just those groups. Those are the ones that are downloading now.

[scsigirl]

I also found that just doing "download all headers" for those handful of groups didn't clear up the problem either. When I looked into the spool folders for those groups, I found Range.* files with dates a month older than the other files in the folder. I deleted all the files in these spool folders and now those groups are being processed properly.

I'll post when I know more.

[scsigirl]

Newsbin is still auto downloading new headers every 15 mins but there are 1339 files in the Import folder now and they don't seem to be going anywhere, so I ran OpenedFilesViewer and noticed it was in fact reading one of the .gz files and the files in the Spool folder for that group are being updated (have current dates), so things seem to be moving along, albeit slowly.

What order are .gz files processed, I had assumed it would be by date but this doesn't seem to be the case?
If I shutdwn Newsbin and restart it, will it process any remaining files in the Import folder?
If not, is there a way to coax it to process these leftover gz files? It seems wasteful to have to download all those headers again.

it seems that my header downloads are getting way ahead of Newsbin's rate of processing them. Is there a way to let Newsbin finish processing the Import folder before doing anything else? This won't always be the case, but for now, I have 7 groups downloading headers 24/7 and it will probably take a week or two to complete.

[Quade]

1 - It loads them newest first unless you have a post list open. Then it'll load the GZ's for that post list's groups first.

2 - If you restart, it'll continue importing where it left off.

3 - "Download all Header" downloads huge amounts of data. It's another reason I suggest avoiding it. If you look at the GZ files, the actual data size is 10 times what the size of the file it. So, a 60 meg GZ represents 600 megs of data to process.

4 - My news servers are unreliable out beyond 1200 days. So, I'm sure having 2200 days worth of headers is that valuable anymore.

5 - I'd disable auto-download for now and let the files just process. The turn it back on when they complete. The other options is to move old GZ files out of the import folder while you're interacting with Newsbin. Then move them back when you just want it to import.

[scsigirl]

Oh Excellent! moving gz files out was a nice way to get the groups I wanted processed first. Now I'm moving all the smaller ones back in chunks and they're getting processed very quickly now.
Thank you again for all your help.
All my favorite tv shows are coming in and I'm lovin my Newsbin once again