Quits working every few days
Moderators: Bill Smith, Pilot
Quits working every few days
Hello folks. Been using Majic Jack as my primary phone line now for a few months. I've got an infrequently-used dedicated computer running XP SP3 (Home) for the Majic jack, which has been working well up until about 3 weeks ago. Every 2-3 days it quits working and I have to reboot the computer. I have disabled automatic updates and do them myself every couple of weeks. Just wondering where I should start looking to figure out why it's crashing.
Not sure why it's crashing but you can have your machine restart automatically once a day by going to scheduled tasks and setting it up. I use this on my xp desktop C:\WINDOWS\system32\shutdown.exe -r and have it set to restart in the middle of the night. Sometimes the best fix with MJ is just a reboot and freshen things up.
Re: Quits working every few days
It could be your USB. I just had a problem where the MJ quit working (that is, no dial-tone on the handset) and my typical response is to pull out the dongle, let the softphone exit, and then re-insert the dongle. That worked, but then none of my other USB devices would work (e.g., scanner, MP3 player). MJ sucks down about 500ma so its a high-powered USB device as compared with most other things that get plugged into USB ports. After a reboot, everything went back to normal - scanner worked again, MP3 recognized, etc. I'm suspecting that there is a power issue with the USB card that a bus reset fixed.comstojc wrote:Hello folks. Been using Majic Jack as my primary phone line now for a few months. I've got an infrequently-used dedicated computer running XP SP3 (Home) for the Majic jack, which has been working well up until about 3 weeks ago. Every 2-3 days it quits working and I have to reboot the computer. I have disabled automatic updates and do them myself every couple of weeks. Just wondering where I should start looking to figure out why it's crashing.
Have you tried another computer to see if its the MJ dongle or the computer/USB ports that are the problem? Have you tried a powered USB hub?
Possibly USB
That's a good thought. I've reload a fresh copy of XP on the machine - I had a bunch of junk on this machine. I'm going to try the other suggestion of restarting the computer at night. If those actions don't correct the issue I'll look into the powered USB option. Thanks for the suggestion.
My MJ just stopped working after 4 days - symptom: softphone still up and working fine but handset had no dial tone. This usually caused me to remove the dongle allowing the softphone to exit, and then re-insert the dongle which had magicjack fully restart. The last time I did this, MJ restarted OK, but all of my other USB devices were somewhat hosed (some worked, some didn't). A reboot fixed everything.
I wanted to find a way to do a full USB controller reset w/o having to reboot the machine. Here's what I found that worked for me when I lost dialtone:
1. Kill the magicJack process (on WinXP): tskill magicJack
2. Use the Microsoft 'devcon' command line: devcon restart *USB*
devcon restarts all of the USB devices which (at least in my case) resulted in magicJack restarting itself and I had dialtone on the handset.
You can get devcon from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272
I wanted to find a way to do a full USB controller reset w/o having to reboot the machine. Here's what I found that worked for me when I lost dialtone:
1. Kill the magicJack process (on WinXP): tskill magicJack
2. Use the Microsoft 'devcon' command line: devcon restart *USB*
devcon restarts all of the USB devices which (at least in my case) resulted in magicJack restarting itself and I had dialtone on the handset.
You can get devcon from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311272