keep a projector running for over 3 weeks 24/7

[michel99]

Hi all,

I'm working on a project that requires our flash movie(game) to run non-stop on a windows pc for about 3 weeks.

Can I expect problems with the flash projecter running out of memory(leaks ,etc.)?

I'm tyrign to dispose of all my variables/objects, will that be enough our do you recommend running a ram-defrag utility at certain intervals?

[Northcode]

RAM defrag utilities will only be of any use on Win 9x and Me systems but you'll likely have more problems just keeping those systems up and running for 3 weeks without crashing. If you have a choice, stick with Windows NT4, 2000 or XP, they are a lot more stable than the other systems and garbage collection problems won't be as serious because the NT based systems manage available memory much better.

[michel99]

We'll be using window XP systems as we could not get a Mac for this job.

Do you know of specific settings that would be optimal? I'm really a mac-person..

Also, is it possible to shutdown and startup a windows pc at predefined intervals?(like startup at 06.00 am and shutdown at 22.30 pm)

thanks!

[Northcode]

On XP you have the scheduling service and a command called "AT" that you can use to schedule things to happen at a certain time. If you type "AT /?" at a command prompt you'll see all the options. You can't schedule a login operation (as far as I know), but you can schedule a reboot/restart. Search for a utility called REBOOT.EXE (or RESTART.EXE) and use AT to schedule it to run whenever you like.

If you want to keep things really simple, you could just call the reboot utility from your game (using the EXEC fscommand) and use Flash as the scheduler. Just use setInterval to call a function once every 5 minutes (or use whatever frequency you like) and check the time. If it's 11:30, call the reboot function.

[michel99]

thanks for that tip, I'll look into it..

But what I'm really looking for is a way to powerup and shutdown a windows pc.. On my mac I can set this up really easy..

[Northcode]

If you can set it to wake up at a specific time, under software control, then it isn't really off and you're probably not getting any benefit from being "off" (like freeing resources). Additionally, if you logout on a Windows machine you need the password to get back in (security y'know). You can get around the login issue if you set the machine up for auto login, but that's basically the equivalent of "no security".

[michel99]

actually, it does work as you might expect on the mac..it uses the battery on the motherboard to trigger a power-on..it actually powers off completely, not just logging off or going into sleep mode.

anyway, no such solution on windows, so I'll have to find another way, or simply forget about it