Screen Saver stops appearing after 3 days??

[linkblue]

Hello,

My company and I are relatively new to creating kiosks for clients, but we have just recently handed over what we thought was a completed kiosk to a client.

We use a program called SiteKiosk to lock down the computer and allow access to a specific website. In addition, we created a screen saver from a flash (swf) file using InstantStorm. Through SiteKiosk, we have this screen saver set to appear after 1 minute of idle time.

We handed over the kiosk with it working as expected. Three days later, the client called saying instead of a screen saver showing up, it is coming up with just a white/blank screen. We came over ASAP and saw that he was correct. We moved the mouse, the website came up, and again, in a minute, the white screen appeared.

We overwrote the screen saver file that we were using, restarted the computer in kiosk mode, and it worked fine. But again, about 3 days later, the client called with the same issue.

Does anyone have any insight at all as to why something like this would happen after 3 days of working fine? Unfortunately I'm quite desperate for some help right now. I'd really appreciate any assistance any of you may be able to provide.

Thanks in advance,
Vicky

[mjstrand]

Our software also a flash based system for playback (like the InstantStorm product - although a different mode of playing). I suspect that the problem is in the InstantStorm screen saver file that is created (but of course this is just a guess). A way to better pinpoint that as the problem would be to do a little diagnosis when it happens next time.

Windows is notorious for not cleaning up "memory leaks", so it could be that the screen saver is kind-of overwriting its own functionality. The next time it happens, if you just restart the computer, it will tell you some more about the problem. If it restarts properly, then it is probably something to do with memory in the Windows environment. If it still shows the white screen after restarting, that tells you that a file is getting overwritten which is probably some sort of security breach (virus, etc).

If it is a memory issue, then some more diagnosing to determine what happens if the mouse is moved once per day (the screen saver is not on full time). If it is an active computer, you probably already know that. As an interim solution, there are programs that can be download that will reboot the computer at specified periods. You can find many free ones at http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best ... rt-pc.html. You could set that up to restart the computer every night at 2:00 am to keep things clear. Obviously a better solution would be good, but it could get you by until you can isolate which software is the problem and your software manufacturers has a chance to fix it.

I hope this helps a little bit. Please keep us posted and hopefully someone will have more experience with your exact situation.

[linkblue]

Thanks for your response. I will do the tests you've mentioned.

Regarding the reboot of the computer, the SiteKiosk program we're using actually does have the option for setting a time of reboot and we have ours set to 1 AM currently.

Thanks again, I'll keep you posted.

[mjstrand]

If SiteKiosk is already setup to reboot each night, then this may be something else (or it is not actually rebooting - which could also be the issue). Do the tests as described, but you may want to change the SiteKiosk reboot time to something that you can watch and make sure you have the configuration correct. Keep us posted.

[linkblue]

thanks for the tips, I appreciate the time you've taken.

[mjstrand]

I had the need to restart one of my computers, and I discovered the windows shutdown.exe program. This can be run in the windows scheduler to shut down at a specific time.

The command is in the system32 folder of the windows directory (typically c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe). You will need to add some parameters depending on what you want to do.

• -s = shutdown

• -r = restart

• -l = logoff

• -t nn = change the delay to nn seconds

• -f = force all programs to shut down

• -a = abort the shutdown or restart