Edge Computing Division Users Forum

Hi. I am a new owner of a fit-PC2 and pretty technically oriented. I apologize in advance if my first post here is too lengthy, but I wanted to convey everything I have already tried with regards to my problem.

I have had my fit-PC2 with Windows XP home for about 2 weeks now and for the most part really like it. At least for my intended purpose, which is to use it for a squeezecenter music server for my Squeezebox wireless music players.

I first noticed a problem with internet downloads right out of the box when I tried to download the server software to install. However, I was able to download the same file from another computer on my network that the fit-PC2 corrupted. Because I was anxious to try it out for its intended purpose, I copied a good download from another PC to a shared drive and used it for the install. It installed and works just fine on the fit-PC2 and all seemed OK beyond the download corruption. I assumed maybe it was a one off problem and got on with setting up the fit-PC2. I think maybe I shouldn't have done so in hindsight.

After getting the music server just the way I wanted, I started playing with the video capability of the fit-PC2 and again every video file I tried to download was corrupted. All these same files could be downloaded from other computers in my network and copied to a network share and run without corruption on the fit-PC2. The reverse was not true. The fit-PC2 downloads were definitely corrupted and didn't work on any of my other computers.

I tried setting the wired connection to not auto-detect the speed (which is 100 mps rather than 1000 mps). No joy. I tried both wired and wireless network connections on the fit-PC2 with the same bad results. I could download the same files from other wired as well as wireless computers in my network just fine. So I believe my network and ISP connection are functioning just fine.

After some googling about this kind of problem, I decided to next make a bootable USB memory key and loaded memtest on it. I booted the fit-PC2 from the USB key and memtest-4.00 ran without failures. So the memory doesn't seem to be the problem.

I ran a full virus scan with AVG free edition and it found no problems.

I am starting to think I have some other fit-PC2 hardware issue, but I really hope I don't because I have everything just the way I want it and really don't want to return it. It is functioning just fine as my music server. The fit-PC2 is currently wired into the 100 mps lan. It seems to be fine streaming music to my squeezebox players (which are wireless). At least I don't hear any issues, so if it is corrupting files as they are streamed it isn't audible.

However, for $400+ I expect it to work in all aspects, and downloading files is something that needs to work.

I would greatly appreciate any ideas on what else this could be. Is there a way I can isolate the problem or do I need to (sadly) RMA the machine and get a new one?

Thanks,
Brian

What OS are you using?
Which program are you using for downloading?Have you tried others also?

I suggest you reinstall firefox and use its download manager. The problem you are describing is too high-level to be caused by a hardware issue.

Thanks for the quick replies.

I bought the machine pre-loaded with Windows XP SP3 (Home) and have only tried using the IE8, which was already on the machine. I will try downloading firefox from another machine and installing it when I get home from work.

Just as another piece of information. Since I posted I found that I was able to download a few small files OK, but any larger downloads always fail.

With regards to using firefox, does this machine require a better download manager to successfully download large files? I wouldn't think so. Or are you just suspecting that the browser was somehow corrupted?

Probably a problem with IE8, that would happen to me with fit-PC Slim sometimes when CPU usage was 100%...It only happened a few times though...

When I first my ft-PC2 with XP SP3 I used IE to download Firefox and it worked fine, but I switched to Firefox anyway cause I like it more.

Now I've downloaded a few GB worth of files using Firefox and never had a problem and about 100GB using a download manager...Never had that issue...

Well, I installed FF 3.5.4 and even added flashgot and downloadthemall plugins. The first download I tried failed I tried several others of varying sizes and some actually succeeded. The good ones were all under 100 MB.

This morning I tried a 240 MB download and it failed. Tried it again using flashgot and it still failed. I tried another 90 MB file this morning and it succeeded. So there seems to be something about the size - at least in this small sampling of files. Any other ideas?

Are downloads terminated mid-way or are carried through and then found corrupted?
You may try setting power saving policy to always-on in case the system suspends during a long download.

The downloads all complete successfully. I have a broadband connection and we are only talking about downloads on the order of 2 minutes or less. The 240 MB one I tried was maybe a bit longer than that but still not really long.

The files I have been experimenting with are from microsoft WMV HD Content Showcase. They download as .exe files that are self-extracting zip files when you run them. The failure is always a CRC error during the unzip. The very first failure I had back when I first got the fit-PC2 was also a .exe of the squeezecenter software and I thought maybe it had something to do with the virus software not liking .exe files so I downloaded the zip file of the same software. The result was also that the zip file failed during the unzip.

For other reasons I have actually set all power management settings to "Never". Screensaver wait time is many hours since my goal was to run this thing headless and have it always on (which is why I really like the low power consumption of it). When running these download tests I have been connecting a monitor though because VNC is useless when I am trying to look at video files. The video performance was what I was really trying to examine in the first place. Unfortunately I haven't got too many of the video files to actually work because of this download corruption problem.

This is download rate of under 20Mbit/s which should not load the system in any significant way.

For comparison, try transferring large files back and forth between the fit-PC2 and other computers in your home to try to identify failures.
My expectation is that there will be none.

Try downloading files from other servers to verify if the problem is server related or network/client related.

Thanks for the ideas, but as I mentioned previously I have tried all of those things. All the videos that failed to download with the fit-PC2 could be downloaded with other computers and copied to the fit-PC2 and unzipped just fine.

I really never suspected that it was a bandwidth issue and hence the reason I wasn't using a download manager in the first place. I tried using one just to make sure it wasn't a browser issue. The real experiment was to use firefox vs. IE8. I tried both, they both failed. The browser and download manager aren't the problem.

I only focused on the video download site because it provided a number of different sized downloads. As I mentioned, the very first thing that failed to download was the squeezecenter software, which was downloaded from a different site. It is not a server issue. The files from all the sites I tried are fine when downloaded from all my other computers in my network. The squeezecenter software is now running on the fit-PC2 because I downloaded it and copied it to the fit-PC2 over my network and installed it. My network and ISP are fine.

This problem is strictly an issue with downloads of files using the fit-PC2. I used the wired and wireless network connections and both exhibit the same problem. The size seems to matter, but not because it is so large that it is a long download. Somewhere in the vicinity of 100 MB in size or greater gets corrupted. The files I have tried download in less than 5 minutes(all but the largest in less than 2 minutes) but they all gets a CRC failure when run/unzipped. Every single file I tried succeeds on other computers in my network.