[walkietokyo]

We've had a few problems with our Samsung LFD's running MagicInfo-i Premium, and I'm curious to see if anyone else have had anything similar happening on their units.

Basically, we have ~15 screens, half of which are touch screens, in stores all around the UK. Since the stores will not let us hook the screens up to their network, we need to publish new content using USB.

The problems began with some screens would start to copy, but then the machine restarts before having completed the transfer. (We can see this by cleaning out the Repository folder before plugging in the USB memory stick. When the screen is back up, we can see that it has copied parts of the content over...) Again, this only happens on some of the screens (repeatable), and we struggle to see any difference with these screens to the ones that work just fine.

After having spoken to Samsung, we have received an update to the MagicInfo-i Premium software - but it doesn't seem to have helped at all with the restarting of the machines.

Usually, we can still transfer the content to the screens using the Admin/Advanced setup, but this is not optimal since we're using sub-contractors to install the content on the screens across the UK, and they are not necessarily very tech-savvy. (This has resulted in countless hours of troubleshooting over the phone.)

Today, we encountered a new problem where the schedule could not even be found by the "Admin/Advanced setup > Schedule > Download Schedules from Removable Disk", but this may be caused by a corrupted USB memory stick (we had previously installed the content just fine using the same USB on another unit.)

We're trying to collect information so that we can help Samsung in diagnosing the problems, so we would be happy if you could chime in should you recognise any of the issues.

Many thanks,
David

[dssc]

What is the MIIP client and author versions are you using?
Did you test USB publishing with the latests s/w release?

[walkietokyo]

We went to Samsung to describe and demonstrate the problems and we handed over a backup unit for them to test. A few days later they sent it back with a newer version on MagicInfo installed (NA-MIIPP-1007.15 (Sep 1 2011)). The same problems still occur.

We were later sent another version of the software: 1008.0 (Oct 5 2011), which also has the same behaviour.

We think we've found part of the problem. We noticed that when the "Hide system messages" checkbox is ticked in Advanced Setup > Options, rather than actually hiding the message as the label of the checkbox implies, the system seem to restart whenever a message box appears.

Due to the nature of Windows XP, when certain USB memory sticks are inserted, it shows a message along the lines of "the hardware has been successfully installed, do you want to restart? [Yes] [No]". This seems to be the cause of some of the issues, since, obviously, EWFManager is not run before the system restarts so when the system is back up, Windows will install the "new hardware" again - showing the same message as before. This ends up in the infinite loop of restarts we were seeing.

By deselecting the "Hide system messages" checkbox, some of the problems seems to be resolved, for now. Though, our sub-contractors have reported issues where the unit has been continuing to restart until the repository folder is cleared (with no USB memory stick being plugged in) so this still needs more investigation.

[pelle989]

Running into a very similar problem walkietokyo. I realize that Samsung is 2 version past the version you experienced issue with, however I am unable to see any schedule listed when I plug in the USB device as well. Were you able to successfully get this issue fixed?
Thank you in advance

[Bill Coral]

EWF is a funny thing...

Ok, normally Samsung screens have an EWF icon on the desktop. If you do change anything (including any USB memory drivers that need to be loaded when inserting a new memory device) I would suggest that you use the EWF to do the Booting rather than the program/operating system that has done the changes on the Samsung WES screen.

Another way is to disable it, you can get to a CMD mode, open up a DOS mode window, and type: C:\>ewfmgr c: - disable

That will disable EWF and will allow any changes/updates to the screen.

Bill