Railmaster Freezing

[newboyonthetrack]

Have just decided to change to DCC and bought an Elite with Raimaster and am not much impressed so far with Railmaster. I didn't expect to experience problems with something as simple as activation but it took multiple phone calls and downloads before

the problem was sorted. Tonight I set up a small test track to test and learn to use the program. Connecting the Elite was straightforward but each time I set up a loco and run it the whole system freezes. Only solution is to use Taskmaster and shut down the

process. Using the Elite on its own is fine. I run 64 bit Win7. Any suggestions?

[stevecamden]

I always make sure that the Elite is working in Standard mode first, and then 'fire up' the PC with the USB cable between the two connected. Having said that I am running XP and have had no problems so perhaps others with Win 7 might comment.

[newboyonthetrack]

That's basically what I did. Used the Elite in Standard Mode to make sure that DCC fitted loco worked OK (it did and also an old 2P that I had fitted a decoder in). I then connected the Laptop, added the locos and then tried to control them via Railmaster.

It would start to work and then the whole system froze.

[stevecamden]

I might be inclined to re-install and re-activate etc. Something perhaps has got corrupted somewhere - I don't have any instances of the system freezing on my XP laptop.

[Augustus Caesar]

It worked fine for me on Win 7 64 bit Ultimate. This was on my PC when I tested it. I now run it solely on Win 7 Home Premium on my laptop. I have had no bother with the program at all. Once installed it should download all updates that are required automatically.

If not a manual install can be done. Also ensure all updates for Win 7 are installed just to make sure everything is fine. If the program keeps freezing I am more inclined to say the PC or laptop is at fault. Make sure there are few apps running in the background

that may be taking up system resources and, of course, run anti spyware programs to make sure they aren't hogging resources either. An anti virus suite is not enough. Add the likes of Malware Bytes and/or Spybot to the system because these will always pick

up stuff no AV package will find. Being an IT guy I am well placed to inform of these things. I don't dabble - I go thorough but not like others - over the top.
As long as the Elite controller is picked up Windows and on the correct port for USB then the

software will work fine. As said I believe your system may be at fault. I hope it isn't but that then means the software is bugged!!! And I hope that isn't the case either! It's one or the other. You could also try and empty your file cache on the system and

the temporary files folder. Some rubbish in either has a chance (a small one) of interfering too.
Hope this helps...

[geoffb41]

if its acually freezing and you have to turn it off then its usually ram or hard drive problem.If it just stops responding its normally an issue in your windows.Every day we get machines that have stopped responding due to windows problems and as next

step we would try it with a clean windows install on another hdd if you can

rgds,

gregg

[Mike_G]

hi

i have elite/railmaster/win7 64bit set up
there have been noproblems
but you could maybe check the elite drives installed
there are different ones for XP and win7/vista

rgds
Mike

[AlfK]

How you getting on with your setup Newboyonthetrack?

Your setup sounds exactly like mine and mine freezes very regularly also(invariably when trying to use loco speed control window - I am an IT professional by trade so am very familiar with W7

and drivers, firewalls, AV/trojan software etc. but have fundamentaly failed to get the latest demo version downloaded from Hornby working on my 1.4 v elite.

I am very frustrated as I got quite excited by all of the hype surrounding Railmaster, so much

so that I have put my Ecos DCC system to one side to try Railmaster - but on experiences so far it may have to come back out.

P.S Am a very patient guy and would still like to sort this.........

Alf K.

[Traincliff]

Hi everyone,
I have just set up Railmaster for my pal and am having exactly the same problem, Windows 7 64bit laptop. Had lots of difficulty getting it on and ended up taking laptop into work and asking one of the IT wizards to load it. System is activated

OK and apparently all well. We can run a loco but as soon as we try to change its speed the programme locks up and the only way to restart is to use the Taskmaster exactly as others have said on this thread. Windows tells us the programme is not responding.

Does any one out there have a solution please? We are getting desperate and as neither of us are IT qualified a solution in plain English would really be appreciated. Help!

Best regards one and all and thanks any suggestions.
Cliff

[Augustus Caesar]

As an extension to my post a way back above I could also ask those of you who haven't thought about the possibility that another program running in the background can also cause the system to crash. Norton's and McAfee AV are notorious for this esp. the

first as it wraps itself around Windows and doesn't like ports being used without its 'permission' (you are using one here remember).
From the start button use the space on the popup where it says 'Search programs and files' to type the following without

the quotes... 'msconfig' and press Enter. A new window opens and from within that, by clicking on the 'Startup' tab you can see a list of all programs that are running in the background as soon as Windows starts up. Now some of these are critical to your start

up and should not be stopped but others can. Programs like Adobe Reader and other non essential programs can be removed from this area simply by removing the tick on the left side of each item. Adobe has the habit of re-entering itself on an update! I remove

it every time as I do with other unimportant rubbish that starts each time I power up the system. Sometimes, you will notice by the system clock on the task bar several icons... these are started up usually by the msconfig file when you boot up. They can occasionally

have their own options built in to stop them running at boot up. Use those when you can.
However, be careful as the responsibility here is your own. Check each item via a quick search via your favourite search engine and decide whether or not to stop it

running on the next startup. If you are not sure then leave it! Simple as that.
A lot of different programs can be running at startup and can interfere with your RailMaster operation as resources on your machine may be limited or taken up when not needed.
Do

a little research into each one as I said and maybe you may be on your way to solving what could be an individual issue and not a program specific or Win 7 x64 bit one.
The only hard drive issues you are likely to encounter is maybe an overfull one (each

drive needs a minimum cache area to allow Windows to use it for a swapfile). This is critical so do not overfill any drive on the system. Doing so will slow it down and cause it stop working eventually. A common problem when folk don't realise this when they

download movies etc...! A drive with bad sectors or clusters can also cause issues but you will be aware of this (usually) when it happens so don't worry about that over much - if at all. It's not really a common issue.
Hope this helps...

[stevecamden]

I think AugustusCaesar makes a very good point here. I run only RM on a dedicated PC - nothing else runs ( including virus checkers etc)

[Traincliff]

stevecamden said:

I think AugustusCaesar makes a very good point here. I run only RM on a dedicated PC - nothing else runs ( including virus checkers etc)

[Traincliff]

Thank you very much for your replies fellas. I will certainly give these suggestions a go when I next visit my pal in a couple of weeks time and then I will post the results back on here. Certainly Mc Afee is running on his computer and there is another

programme from Dell that is very irritating in continually requesting an upgrade that we dont want.

Following my posting yesterday we fired it up once more and had two trains running well using the hare and the tortoise only to control. As soon as we

attempted to change speed from the on screen "regulator" the programme shut down. The train that we tried to regulate stooped and the other carried on running. Both could be picked up again by the Elite without difficulty.

My pal is a keen modeller

but has Parkinsons so it is important we get this sorted as the touch screen control is going to be a real boon to the enjoyment of operating his railway without the intricacies of the Elite and he will be able to see several of his engines on screen in front

of him. Will be brilliant but frustrating at the moment.

Thanks again for your advice fellas.

Cliff

[Montywb]

It seems to me that one should be able to run a program like Railmaster without having to delve into whatever else processes and services are running and decide which ones to stop. I am running Railmaster on a brand new, dedicated PC and I too experience

this problem. Perhaps Hornby Customer Care would like to comment?

[stevecamden]

I am running on XP and honestly have never had this problem - so there must be an issue in the software causing these glitches for people on Windows 7 /touch screen - I understand your frustration but can't think of what to do other than to speak with

HCC.

[David55]

I've had this happen for the first time recently.

Strangely I rebooted the computer and railmaster was already on screen and working fine as though I'd never turned the computer off..

[Hornby Customer Care]

Hi All,

Please turn off real-time speed data which can be found in the settings menu. When the box appears please navigate to the lower right-hand side and uncheck the data box. This will then reduce the amount of data being sent to the Elite, which

in turn should stop your freezing issues.

[Biggless]

Hornby Customer Care said:

Hi All,

Please turn off real-time speed data which can be found in the settings menu. When the box appears please navigate to the lower right-hand side and uncheck the data box. This will then reduce the

amount of data being sent to the Elite, which in turn should stop your freezing issues.

[Biggless]

I am trying, also without success, to run RailMaster on my HP laptop with Intel i5 Processor running 32bit Windows 7. I have a lot of problems for Railmaster to even "see" the Elite and then the few times I have connected, I also get the freeze issue when

I change speeds. Windows 7 has been around now for ages and I have to say that the Railmaster software is frankly just not very robust. An i5 processor has lots of power, why should I have to switch off features to make it work ?? Would Hornby care to comment

on what would be the "ideal" specification for a laptop so that ALL the features of Railmaster work correctly ?

[idlemarvel]

I think the ideal spec is any PC running XP! I tried for months to get RM running on Windows 7 and gave up. I have worked in IT for 30 years so I know what I am doing but I decided life was too short to persevere. The best results I ever got were running

an XP image under VMware Player which is what finally persuaded me to give up. I'm sure there are forumites who have got it running under Windows 7 but I would suspect they are considerably outnumbered by those who run it under XP. Certainly most of the forum

entries with problems are attempting a Windows 7 install. Sorry I can't be more positive. I like RM despite its faults, and I can now run it for an hour or so without problems, including simultaneously running programs and controlling locos, points and signals.

It, by which I mean the collective "it" of RM, XP and Elite, still stops working from time to time, irrationally and unrepeatably, but not often enough to stop it being useable and great fun. Even then I just restart everything and it all works again every

time. With Windows 7 I couldn't even guarantee that, sometimes it wouldn't recognise the Elite, sometimes it would, no discernable pattern to help determine why.

[phaeton]

Hi All,

I too have had this issue on my windows XP TC1100 touchscreen tablet, and it only occurs if you open a full sized controller using the "quick" controllers and everything is working fine, but as soon as you open the full size

one it hangs during a data transmit to the elite, i havent had time but i will put a port sniffer on the com port to find out what command its hanging on....looks like it might be an ACK.

But in the mean time has anyone had any success with the suggestion

hornby has put up?

[phaeton]

Hi All,

I too have had this issue on my windows XP TC1100 touchscreen tablet, and it only occurs if you open a full sized controller using the "quick" controllers and everything is working fine, but as soon as you open the full size

one it hangs during a data transmit to the elite, i havent had time but i will put a port sniffer on the com port to find out what command its hanging on....looks like it might be an ACK.

But in the mean time has anyone had any success with the suggestion

hornby has put up?

[Traincliff]

Hornby Customer Care said:

Hi All,

Please turn off real-time speed data which can be found in the settings menu. When the box appears please navigate to the lower right-hand side and uncheck the data box. This will then reduce the

amount of data being sent to the Elite, which in turn should stop your freezing issues.

[Traincliff]

Hi again,

My belated thanks HCC for this "fix". I only see my pal once a week or so and with other things going on even that had not been possible until last week. Yes your suggestion has indeed worked and since initiating it has only frozen once.

Gradually adding and testing each of his locos. Only problem we now seem to have is that we can only turn loco lights on from the Elite but can turn them off from Railmaster? Is this part of the same problem perhaps?

We will I am sure get there in the

end so thanks agin for your help.

Best regards
Cliff

[2e0dtoeric]

Another thing you could do is to run a free programme called CCleaner. It looks at all the sectors of your drives, and removes all the rubbish that gets left behind when you open, use, or delete stuff.
You don't need to be a computer whiz to load or

use it.
It might take a while to run, the first time, but after that, you are looking at a couple of seconds. (depending on your computer, of course!)
It will find all the stuff it thinks you don't need, and tell you how much space it can release, then

ask your permission to get rid of all the junk.