Problem - When things that were working fine suddenly stop working (long thread, fun thread)

[shazbork]

Now and then I experience erratic behavior when running KA so I decided to, instead of addressing one or two particular issues, see if the brainiacs here can brainstorm up some one-offs that might cause erratic behavior in general. I also want to see if other people have similar issues with "It was working fine, I didn't change a damn thing, now it's broken!" I have a sneaking suspicion that all of my issues are interrelated and that they stem from something that is really just a 'one-off.' So I'll provide a few examples of behavior I experience, and what I have tried to do to resolve them, and then an anecdote about a piece of proprietary software. I'm curious to see what you guys can come up with. I'll take conspiracies as well.

• Previous issues with warriors suddenly deciding not to med endurance, even though they were working perfectly for months, one day they just decided to stop (there's a thread on this one, but I no longer use KA on my warriors)
• Multiple groups running, one or two looters decide to go rogue and ignore Loot.INI; or they loot items that are on ignore 1 out of every N times they drop, just to sort of say "Hey, I'm not always going to pay attention to the Loot ini" (I'd love a solution just for this cuz this one fucks me really bad, but also want to stay on topic here)
• Bard pullers and assists suddenly taking naps after pulling/when mobs are in camp. Not engaging until 50% or even later.

These are the more 'pronounced' issues I have experienced that appear entirely random and have nothing to do with a change in configuration simply because they were working fine for weeks and no configuration changes were made. They just suddenly, randomly, decide to give me the finger. Now I know what some of you might be thinking here at this point. You never experience this kind of behavior, and users are generally retarded so I must have done *something*, right? I haven't made a configuration change on any of my guys in over a month. Hand to Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Now, previously Maskoi pointed out that long periods of uptime can create wackiness. I'll buy that. But rebooting is not helping resolve these issues. I currently experience the looting problem on only one looter, and sometimes the bard naptime problem on two of my bards. I have tried rebooting, no help. Refreshing injections. No help. I even closed out Teamviewer. Why would I do that? Well, I can't help but think of a situation I encountered at work which is as follows:

Anecdote: I have worked with a piece of proprietary, industry specific software that allows some customization to produce standardized forms. In particular, including (attaching) graphics files into a boiler plate template. In order to change this attached image, you must delete the existing attachment and then attach a new one. In order to delete the existing attached image, you must ensure that TEAMVIEWER is not running in the background. I shit you not. Does that sound stupid? Yes. Yes it does. Is it a very real problem? Yes, surprisingly having teamviewer running in the background literally prevents you from deleting an attached file inside of this particular piece of software. Why? I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA and neither does anyone else including the company that makes the software. Because it makes absolutely no sense. But it's super true.

So maybe there's a similar problem here in my world. Maybe having Windows 7 Taskbar Tweaker running (just being random here), is actually polluting memory and causing problems. Maybe I just have too many clients open and injections are failing (I run a lot of guys, but so do other people). Maybe I'm missing some very basic piece of information that everyone else has and I just skimmed over at some point. Maybe there's a backdoor in my machine and someone's toggling settings through EQBC just to fuck with me when I'm not looking.

Anyone else experience inexplicable phenomenon?
Anyone got any ideas on where the monkey wrench might really be?
What's for dinner?

 

[ctaylor22]

I had a problem once, on my work computer, that I could not figure out I rebooted and tried everything I even powered off the computer. Come to find out my network card was caching credentials for one our old NAS devices we had taken off line. The solution. I had to power off the machine, unplug the power from the computer and then press the power button(while still unplugged) to get the network card to reset the onboard cache.

Now when I reset my computers, If the reboot doesn't work. I not only power them off, but I unplug them and do a total power reset before turning them back on.

 

[hoosierbilly]

I don't run KA, but do occasionally experience weird problems similar to what you describe. One thing I have found is a death/resurrection will mess up the group roles part of my macro causing some of my issues (someday I really need to fix that). Other times, I think the computer just loses track of one or more of the many variables and weird things start happening. Shutting down and restarting fixes any issues I experience, but I only play a couple hours at a time and almost never afk.

 

[Meistro]

Have you looked into background operations that might be running? Sometimes mine will do some really funky stuff if my computer maintenance or virus software (etc) decides it wants to run something because it "thinks" the computer is idle.

 

[Razkle]

Have you tried turning it off and back on again, it is not just a slogan, it is always the 1st step in removing weirdness...

After a few deaths or a few days or a random Wednesday your toons may act erratic, a reboot should always be your 1st order. I run into a lot of weird shit but I run a lot of boxes. I find work around / fixes and move on only to find more issues tomorrow. Keep at it. I can tell you right now that MOST of my boxes are running smoothly for a change so Kiss, MQ2 and all the flavors of addons and plugins are working pretty stable at this moment....

there are things I want to do, there are things that don't work the way I want them, there are things that will never change but overall... mobs are dying, loot is being collected and toons are leveling, so all is well...

 

[shazbork]

I've been rebooting a lot lately to try and resolve some of my issues. If that worked for me 100% of the time I would be okay with that, but for some reason it doesn't. Part of me does wonder if doing a "/bcaa //q" (killing all my clients instantly so I can reboot) actually corrupts some settings somewhere, or something. Like I had that random MobIgnore for one of the zones I hunt in (thread on that one, woulda never thought it was a mob on ignore because I totally didn't put that there, no idea how it got there - once again thanks to Maskoi for having me check in a place I assumed was the way I left it).

I tell ya, it would be super cool if some brilliant super nerd was able to create a console client so I didn't have to load up a ton of full EQ clients. I got a solid 12 guys now that really just need to be issued a series of startup commands, I don't need to see anything really. So I would love to run them all on separate consoles inside VM's that I could reboot whenever shit goes wonky, without disrupting everything else. Plus that would provide them with individual access to the core and macros/includes. How's that for a fantasy?

 

[playbetter]

shazbork,
One thing I noticed was my plugins were growing without me doing it. Do a /plugin list and see what all is loaded up. If you can get rid of some, do it. It may help.

I have my boxes load from a spreadsheet and the spreadsheet saves a sparse Macroquest.ini over the current one automatically to begin anew. It has eliminated many of my frustrations.

Good luck,
Playbetter.................

 

[shazbork]

Another fine suggestion. I've been taking these odd scenarios as a sign I should let some toons "cool off." So they've been AFK in guildlobby for a couple days. Just moved one of my guys back to what he was doing and now he's working 100% fine (so far). Interesting stuff, i say.

 

[Razkle]

I've been rebooting a lot lately to try and resolve some of my issues. If that worked for me 100% of the time I would be okay with that, but for some reason it doesn't. Part of me does wonder if doing a "/bcaa //q" (killing all my clients instantly so I can reboot) actually corrupts some settings somewhere, or something. Like I had that random MobIgnore for one of the zones I hunt in (thread on that one, woulda never thought it was a mob on ignore because I totally didn't put that there, no idea how it got there - once again thanks to Maskoi for having me check in a place I assumed was the way I left it).

I tell ya, it would be super cool if some brilliant super nerd was able to create a console client so I didn't have to load up a ton of full EQ clients. I got a solid 12 guys now that really just need to be issued a series of startup commands, I don't need to see anything really. So I would love to run them all on separate consoles inside VM's that I could reboot whenever shit goes wonky, without disrupting everything else. Plus that would provide them with individual access to the core and macros/includes. How's that for a fantasy?

I only wish, most days I log in about 90 clients, so I feel your pain. I have had some of the same issues you have had (kiss info file corruption) and it happens, but it is rare. Most time you just need a reboot. I know for me patch day is HELL as I have to reboot every machine and reload every client. If not for autohotkey and isboxer I would not do it!

- - - Updated - - -

shazbork,
One thing I noticed was my plugins were growing without me doing it. Do a /plugin list and see what all is loaded up. If you can get rid of some, do it. It may help.

I have my boxes load from a spreadsheet and the spreadsheet saves a sparse Macroquest.ini over the current one automatically to begin anew. It has eliminated many of my frustrations.

Good luck,
Playbetter.................

I set mine to read only, problem solved