UMS not opening on Windows 10

[newuser]

Hello -- I am a complete newbie to DLNA media servers. I went looking for one after I bought an HP Windows 10 laptop and discovered that the method of music streaming I had used to my OPPO BDP-103 BluRay player from my Windows 7 laptop no longer worked in Windows 10. I settled on UMS, installed it on my new laptop, and was able to add my music folders to UMS and stream them to the OPPO successfully. But after that, I stopped being able to open the UMS program at all -- it would always get stuck at the "loading" stage. I wondered if it may have had something to do with the fact that I upgraded to a new version of Java at that point. But streaming continued to work, so I didn't worry about it until the external hard drive I keep my music (WAV files) on was accidentally disconnected from the laptop, and when I reconnected it, the drive letter had changed, which screwed up the UMS database, and I was unable to open UMS to fix it.

I tried uninstalling UMS and reinstalling, uninstalling Java and reinstalling that, and using an older version of UMS (8.2.0), but nothing worked -- I could never get the program to open again. Sometimes it wouldn't even bring up the "loading" screen -- I would double-click on the UMS desktop icon and nothing would happen at all.

Currently, whenever I try to open UMS, the UMS "Splash screen" appears, then if I'm watching in Task Manager, the UMS icon appears at the top of the list of background processes, and the UMS splash screen then disappears without opening a UMS window. When I try to re-open UMS, I can never get past the splash screen, and every time I close it out and try to re-open it again, another instance of "javaw.exe" appears in the list under the "Details" tab of Task Manager. All of these "javaw.exe" instances are marked as "running".

I apologize, but I am not Windows 10-savvy enough to provide a debug log without detailed instructions.

Can anyone help? Many thanks in advance.

[Nadahar]

It sounds like you have installed UMS as a Windows service. Doing that means that UMS runs in the background as soon as the computer starts, and it won't work to also start it "manually" while the service is running. The stop the service, you must use the "Service manager". You can open it by running "%windir%\system32\services.msc".

[newuser]

Thank you for your kind and quick reply. I remember finding the option to run UMS as a service when I was exploring the UMS window, and I guess I chose to do that without knowing what would happen. I've now looked at the list of services, and I can't identify any of them as being UMS -- there's nothing called "UMS" or "Universal Media Server" or anything similar. Is it called something else? I don't have any instances of "javaw.exe" running.

When I uninstalled the program, shouldn't my instruction to run it as a service have been deleted as well?

Other notes -- after one of my uninstalls yesterday, I uninstalled Java as well, and when I reinstalled UMS after that, UMS re-installed Java itself. Also, a couple of times during reinstallations of UMS yesterday, I had faults, where apparently the installer couldn't find certain files -- in those cases, I stopped the installation, re-downloaded the installer, and tried again, and it worked the second time. Also, the last time I uninstalled UMS, I used the uninstall .exe that came with UMS itself, rather that going through Windows 10 settings (although I don't know if that made any difference at all) -- and afterwardsI noticed after that it had still left a UMS folder with some stuff in it, so I deleted that before the next reinstall. But it didn't help -- the program still doesn't work.

Again, thank you very much for any help you can provide.

[Nadahar]

I don't think the uninstaller removes the service, it's somewhat complicated to explain why, but it has to do with the fact that UMS is a Java program that can't really be run as a service which leads to the use of a (native) wrapper that complicates things.

If the service is running while UMS is being uninstalled, the files that are currently in used will be locked and the uninstaller won't be able to remove them. That said, I don't have an explanation for all the things you describe, I'm not sure what to conclude form this. There are multiple potential issues, first of all, the later versions of UMS has many issues that I'm not even familiar with (I haven't run UMS since 6.8.0). So, it's possible that there's some issue I simply isn't aware of. Second, UMS probably doesn't remove the configuration folder when you uninstall, and if something in this folder prevents it from starting, you will experience this over and over again. You can find the configuration folder here:

Code: Select all

%allusersprofile%\UMS

Try to rename or delete the folder and see if it makes a difference.

Also, I wasn't aware that UMS came with an "uninstall.exe"... have you checked this file with virustotal.com to see what it really is? As far as I know, the UMS setup executable can be used both as installer and uninstaller, so there should be no separate uninstaller.

UMS should be called "Universal Media Server" or "Digital Media Server" in the services view. The latter is because they didn't change the name when they copied code from the Digital Media Server project. I think it has been corrected now, but if you try older versions it might show up with this name. If you can't find any of these in your services and there's no javaw.exe running (make sure to click (show processes for all users)), it sounds like it doesn't run as a service.

In the configuration folder described above, you should also be able to find a "debug.log" file. If you attach that here, it might show something that could shed some more light on this.

[mik_s]

Might be a stupid question but are you sure it is not running minimised? check the arrow on your task bar to see if the UMS icon is there then you can open the user interface there.

UMS runs on the javaw.exe process, if you see that running in task manager try killing all instances and running UMS again.

If I remember correctly UMS will automatically install Java if you don't already have it, but I think the later versions use a standalone version that doesn't need a full Java install.

Also, I wasn't aware that UMS came with an "uninstall.exe"... have you checked this file with virustotal.com to see what it really is? As far as I know, the UMS setup executable can be used both as installer and uninstaller, so there should be no separate uninstaller.

Yes there is an uninstaller now. there has been issues when people have tried to remove UMS to do a fresh install and it would cause problems but I believe those issues have been sorted out now.

[newuser]

Thank you both for your responses. UMS was not running minimized -- I checked. I've tried killing the instances of javaw.exe and running UMS again -- no go.

I did not find "Universal Media Server" or "Digital Media Server" in the services view, and I had no instances of javaw.exe running.

However -- success! I found the config folder by searching for the "debug.log" on the C: drive -- I renamed the folder, and then I was able to open UMS! I've rebuilt my list of shared music folders, and both the UMS program and streaming to my OPPO seem to be working correctly.

For reference, I have attached the debug.log file. I did not look at it -- I doubt I would understand much in it.

Thank you very much for your kind and effective help!

[Nadahar]

The log doesn't show anything out of the ordinary. Because you didn't intend to make it, it's not in "trace" mode unfortunately, so a lot of information that would otherwise be there is missing. In any case, it's clear that something in the configuration folder caused the problem.

You didn't have to search for "debug.log", you could just have opened any Windows Explorer window and pasted "%allusersprofile%\UMS" - or pasted it in the "run" dialog (Win + R). Either way, you found it, which is the most important

[Nadahar]

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