Power-Cycling Windows 7 PC: Pitfalls?

I have a remotely-located Windows 7 PC acting as a server for a bunch of
IP cams at a second remote location.

Long story short: once or twice a month things get weird and the only
fix seems to be power-cycling the PC, switch, and radio link to the
cams.

During summer months I can usually get the owner of the property to
toggle the switch on the power strip that serves all the devices.

But other times of the year, the owner is away and getting somebody to
get in to the property and do the deed is a big deal.


Two options come to mind:

- For about $100, a Raspberry Pi hooked into an AC relay
that I can get to via the Internet and power cycle the
devices whenever I need to - basically duplicating the
current situation except that the homeowner or
neighbor is out of the picture.

- For about $10, a simple mechanical timer switch that
power cycles the PC and all once every 24 hours - so
when the cams go down, the situation is remedied
by the next day.


I like #2 for it's low cost and simplicity.

But are there pitfalls around power-cycling the
PC over-and-over again day-after-day?...
--
Pete Cresswell

On 02/09/2017 12:00 PM, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
I have a remotely-located Windows 7 PC acting as a server for a bunch of
IP cams at a second remote location.

Long story short: once or twice a month things get weird and the only
fix seems to be power-cycling the PC, switch, and radio link to the
cams.

During summer months I can usually get the owner of the property to
toggle the switch on the power strip that serves all the devices.

But other times of the year, the owner is away and getting somebody to
get in to the property and do the deed is a big deal.


Two options come to mind:

- For about $100, a Raspberry Pi hooked into an AC relay
that I can get to via the Internet and power cycle the
devices whenever I need to - basically duplicating the
current situation except that the homeowner or
neighbor is out of the picture.

- For about $10, a simple mechanical timer switch that
power cycles the PC and all once every 24 hours - so
when the cams go down, the situation is remedied
by the next day.


I like #2 for it's low cost and simplicity.

But are there pitfalls around power-cycling the
PC over-and-over again day-after-day?...

And for that reason the extra $90 removes that pitfall and may save some
$$$$ on new equipment.

On 2/9/2017 9:00 AM, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
I have a remotely-located Windows 7 PC acting as a server for a bunch of
IP cams at a second remote location.

Long story short: once or twice a month things get weird and the only
fix seems to be power-cycling the PC, switch, and radio link to the
cams.

During summer months I can usually get the owner of the property to
toggle the switch on the power strip that serves all the devices.

But other times of the year, the owner is away and getting somebody to
get in to the property and do the deed is a big deal.


Two options come to mind:

- For about $100, a Raspberry Pi hooked into an AC relay
that I can get to via the Internet and power cycle the
devices whenever I need to - basically duplicating the
current situation except that the homeowner or
neighbor is out of the picture.

- For about $10, a simple mechanical timer switch that
power cycles the PC and all once every 24 hours - so
when the cams go down, the situation is remedied
by the next day.


I like #2 for it's low cost and simplicity.

But are there pitfalls around power-cycling the
PC over-and-over again day-after-day?...


I bought my PC from Dell in October 2013. Whenever I leave my house and
when I go to bed at night, I shut down my PC. Several times a year,
Southern California Edison (SoCalEd) suffers an outage. All of that
means it is powered off more than once a day (sometimes not gracefully)
and then powered on. Now, more than three years later, my PC is still
working very well.

At least one SoCalEd outage killed my router despite it being plugged
into a surge suppressor. Recently, a four-year-old modem died.

--
David E. Ross
http://www.rossde.com/

Paraphrasing Mark Twain, who was quoting someone else:
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and
alternative truths.

On Thu, 09 Feb 2017 12:00:52 -0500, "(PeteCresswell)"
wrote:

Two options come to mind:

- For about $100, a Raspberry Pi hooked into an AC relay
that I can get to via the Internet and power cycle the
devices whenever I need to - basically duplicating the
current situation except that the homeowner or
neighbor is out of the picture.

- For about $10, a simple mechanical timer switch that
power cycles the PC and all once every 24 hours - so
when the cams go down, the situation is remedied
by the next day.
...
But are there pitfalls around power-cycling the
PC over-and-over again day-after-day?...

Yes, there are potential consequences to power-cycling anything on a
frequent basis, and components of the system, especially PSUs, are
supposedly more likely to fail.

I suggest a conventional management card plugged into the PC so that
it can be rebooted remotely.
--
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Please always reply to ng as the email in this post's
header does not exist. Or use a contact address at:
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In article , says...

On 02/09/2017 12:00 PM, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
I have a remotely-located Windows 7 PC acting as a server for a bunch of
IP cams at a second remote location.

Long story short: once or twice a month things get weird and the only
fix seems to be power-cycling the PC, switch, and radio link to the
cams.

During summer months I can usually get the owner of the property to
toggle the switch on the power strip that serves all the devices.

But other times of the year, the owner is away and getting somebody to
get in to the property and do the deed is a big deal.


Two options come to mind:

- For about $100, a Raspberry Pi hooked into an AC relay
that I can get to via the Internet and power cycle the
devices whenever I need to - basically duplicating the
current situation except that the homeowner or
neighbor is out of the picture.

- For about $10, a simple mechanical timer switch that
power cycles the PC and all once every 24 hours - so
when the cams go down, the situation is remedied
by the next day.


I like #2 for it's low cost and simplicity.

But are there pitfalls around power-cycling the
PC over-and-over again day-after-day?...

And for that reason the extra $90 removes that pitfall and may save some
$$$$ on new equipment.

I have more than a few pcs here at home. Three are never powered down
except when there's a power outage. They do sometimes get a "Restart".
There's my wife's though that gets powered off/on every day and
sometimes numerous times during the day. They all work fine.

Luck's involved to some extent but I suspect you'd have few if any
problems. Modern power supplies should take it for some time and as well
the components in the gear also. Only thing I'd worry about is the cold
if unit stayed powered off for too long. That was a problem I had to
contend with years ago now with pcs left in a box on a wharf 365 days a
year and we sometimes get -20C. Small lightbulb in box fixed that

PeteCresswell wrote:

I have a remotely-located Windows 7 PC acting as a server for a bunch of
IP cams at a second remote location.

Long story short: once or twice a month things get weird and the only
fix seems to be power-cycling the PC, switch, and radio link to the
cams.

During summer months I can usually get the owner of the property to
toggle the switch on the power strip that serves all the devices.

But other times of the year, the owner is away and getting somebody to
get in to the property and do the deed is a big deal.

Two options come to mind:

- For about $100, a Raspberry Pi hooked into an AC relay
that I can get to via the Internet and power cycle the
devices whenever I need to - basically duplicating the
current situation except that the homeowner or
neighbor is out of the picture.

- For about $10, a simple mechanical timer switch that
power cycles the PC and all once every 24 hours - so
when the cams go down, the situation is remedied
by the next day.

I like #2 for it's low cost and simplicity.

But are there pitfalls around power-cycling the
PC over-and-over again day-after-day?...

Many users power off their computer when they are done using it. That
means, at least, one power cycle per day. I leave mine up 24x7 because
the convenience outweighs any arguments pro or con regarding hardware
longevity or power costs.

There are schools or other places using kiosk software or virtualized
disks (not virtualized machines) that want their host started "fresh"
for the next day so those hosts are in a known starting state.
Rebooting wipes any changes made to the HDDs or SSDs. Any data the
users generate on those hosts must be saved on removable or networked
media or on internal drives/partitions separate of the partition(s) in
which the OS resides (that is having its file I/O virtualized).

The cheapest way is to simply use a scheduled event to reboot the
computer. Define an event in Task Scheduler to run shutdown.exe but
have it reboot instead of shutdown. The event would run:

shutdown.exe /r /c "comment"
or /g

I've not used /g to know how it differs from /r. Both restart the
computer. I would add the comment which gets recorded in the Event
Viewer so you can monitor that the computer actually did get restarted
when you scheduled it to do so, plus it would let you know which
shutdown events to ignore if you are troubleshooting crash or unexpected
restart problems. Run "shutdown.exe /?" to see all the command-line
arguments.

If you don't want to rely on the host doing its own scheduled reboot
(because if it crashes then it won't be running scheduled events), there
are outlets you can get that can be scheduled to power cycle any
connected electrical device; e.g., Insteon outlet or module
(http://www.insteon.com/on-off-outlet/) plus it lets you remote control
via cellular using a smartphone app.

Alternatively, there are networked remote power control devices you can
get that will let you control the power to a host over a network.
Obviously the network must be up for that to work, plus your network
must be reachable from the remote location. If any hop in the Internet
between the host and the remote one is unresponsive or dead, and because
routing is not dynamic, you won't be able to reach the host from the
remote one. Similarly, and just as obvious, you cannot use the remote
power control device on the critical network devices (taking down the
network, like cable modem or router) unless that remote power control
device has some built-in logic to perform the power off and then follow
with a power on so the network comes back up (and which you need to
connect to the cameras via network). Doing an online search on "network
remote power control" or "web controlled power switch" or just "web
switch" turns up lots of choices, like:

Dataprobe iBoot (http://dataprobe.com/power/)
ControlByWeb WebSwitch (http://www.controlbyweb.com/webswitch/)

There might be better or cheaper choices. I just gave some examples.
Because networks do go down, including ISPs, or portions of them which
would make accessing the web switch impossible, there might be an
alternative that uses radio; i.e., a radio controlled remote power
switch. However, that would require a big-ass antenna to receive and a
big-ass transmitter (probably shortwave to bounce off the ionosphere to
get around the curvature of the Earth or satellite transmission but that
would probably incur a monthly service subscription) to provide remote
control. There might even be cellular remote power control switches if
there are cell towers nearby and you could use a smartphone app. I
don't need remote power control so I have not looked into all the
possibilities.

I also did not investigate how they secure themselves to ensure only an
authorized admin can issue a power request. Since those would be on the
intranet side of your router (or the one integrated within a cable
modem), you would need to punch a hole in its firewall so you can
connect to the web switch from the Internet. You connect to a specific
port on the WAN-side of your router which redirects traffic to the web
switch (which hopefully has authentication control).

Since the user's hosts probably get dynamically assigned IP addresses,
you'll want to look into OpenDNS, No-IP, or similar DDNS (dynamic DNS)
service providers that will let you assign a static hostname to your
dynamically IP addressed host. Some routers have built-in DDNS but I
found most don't poll/update your free account to keep it alive. Free
accounts often require polling at intervals of a month, or less, to
prove you still use that account. Router DDNS usually only issues an
update when its WAN-side dynamic IP address changes (from your ISP's
DHCP server). So instead you will probably have to run a local DNS
updater client on your remote host. It periodically updates your DDNS
account (some at a schedule you can specify but don't make it too short
as it is unnecessary and abusive to their free service) or when it
detects a change in IP address on the host were it runs. That way, you
can use the same hostname (with the forwarding port in the router's
firewall) to access the web switch; e.g., http://myhostnameort.

On Thu, 09 Feb 2017 12:00:52 -0500, "(PeteCresswell)"
wrote:

I have a remotely-located Windows 7 PC acting as a server for a bunch of
IP cams at a second remote location.

Long story short: once or twice a month things get weird and the only
fix seems to be power-cycling the PC, switch, and radio link to the
cams.

If it were me, I'd want to know what it means to "get weird" and fix
that issue properly. Rebooting, especially by cycling the power, doesn't
seem like a good solution to me.

Since you say the devices are IP cams, do you even need the Win 7 PC?
Can you aggregate the cams with a switch, then use a router to bring all
of them to where you are? Or if they're wireless, skip the switch and
use a WiFi router?

--

Char Jackson

On Thu, 9 Feb 2017 13:17:04 -0600, VanguardLH wrote in


Many users power off their computer when they are done using it. That
means, at least, one power cycle per day.

That's a controlled shutdown rather than "pulling the plug".
--
Web based forums are like subscribing to 10 different newspapers
and having to visit 10 different news stands to pickup each one.
Email list-server groups and USENET are like having all of those
newspapers delivered to your door every morning.

On Thu, 9 Feb 2017 13:17:04 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:

Many users power off their computer when they are done using it.


Yes, but I would probably say "most," rather than "many."



That
means, at least, one power cycle per day.


Yes, and for many people, they use it several times a day, and that
means multiple power cycles.


I leave mine up 24x7 because
the convenience outweighs any arguments pro or con regarding hardware
longevity or power costs.


So do I, for the same reason. But before I retired, and was away from
the house from around 7:30am to around 7:30am Monday through Friday, I
fell into that "most" category" above.

The only time my computer is ever powered off is when I'm away from
home for a week or two, for example when I'm away on a vacation.

On 2/9/2017 9:00 AM, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
I have a remotely-located Windows 7 PC acting as a server for a bunch of
IP cams at a second remote location.

Long story short: once or twice a month things get weird and the only
fix seems to be power-cycling the PC, switch, and radio link to the
cams.

During summer months I can usually get the owner of the property to
toggle the switch on the power strip that serves all the devices.

But other times of the year, the owner is away and getting somebody to
get in to the property and do the deed is a big deal.


Two options come to mind:

- For about $100, a Raspberry Pi hooked into an AC relay
that I can get to via the Internet and power cycle the
devices whenever I need to - basically duplicating the
current situation except that the homeowner or
neighbor is out of the picture.

- For about $10, a simple mechanical timer switch that
power cycles the PC and all once every 24 hours - so
when the cams go down, the situation is remedied
by the next day.


I like #2 for it's low cost and simplicity.

But are there pitfalls around power-cycling the
PC over-and-over again day-after-day?...

Assuming "power cycle" /= "graceful shutdown".

Maybe a reset is slightly better than a power cycle
in terms of mechanical and electrical stress during power up.

I'm guessing you have a lot of data flying around from the cameras.
Cutting the power is likely to cause disk corruption sooner or later.
You might need more than a power cycle to fix that.

When you hold the power button, many computers shutdown. Is that
more graceful than pulling the plug?

Can you really guarantee a power cycle will recover?
If it comes up with an error condition and, "press any key to continue"
you'll be hozed.

I have a ip cam that stops working periodically. I cycle power
on just the camera and it comes back.

I don't know much about the subject, but is there a version
of magic packet (wake on lan) that can be brought to bear on the situation?

My win7 desktop goes to sleep a dozen of times a day. Been working
fine for years.

On Thu, 09 Feb 2017 12:00:52 -0500, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
- For about $100, a Raspberry Pi hooked into an AC relay
that I can get to via the Internet and power cycle the
devices whenever I need to - basically duplicating the
current situation except that the homeowner or
neighbor is out of the picture.

You can get a smart outlet for considerably less than that, if you
have Internet connectivity at that location.

I wouldn't recommend cycling power when there's not an actual
problem. Sooner or later it'll happen when Windows is in the middle
of some operation, and then there'll be a mess.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

On Thu, 9 Feb 2017 13:17:04 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:
Many users power off their computer when they are done using it. That
means, at least, one power cycle per day.


But that's not what the OP is proposing. He's proposing routinely
cutting the power, not routinely shutting Windows down.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://BrownMath.com/
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
Shikata ga nai...

Per CRNG:

That's a controlled shutdown rather than "pulling the plug".

That's what I am talking about: "Pulling the plug".... Wasn't thinking
so much about hardware exposure as System exposu how well Windows 7
deals with just having the plug yanked.
--
Pete Cresswell

Per mike:
Assuming "power cycle" /= "graceful shutdown".

No... I should have been clearer.

In this case it means the equivalent of pulling the plug and then
plugging it back in: no shutdown...just yank the plug.

Problem is that part of "Getting weird" is that TeamViewer cannot get to
the PC so I can't reboot anyhow.... even so we have tried just rebooting
the PC with somebody on site and it has not remedied the problems.]

Seems like something with the router/switch to me.... but re-booting the
router doesn't fix it either... it has to be multiple devices that are
powered off/on.
--
Pete Cresswell

On 2/9/2017 3:16 PM, (PeteCresswell) wrote:
Per CRNG:

That's a controlled shutdown rather than "pulling the plug".

That's what I am talking about: "Pulling the plug".... Wasn't thinking
so much about hardware exposure as System exposu how well Windows 7
deals with just having the plug yanked.


I strongly suspect that "pulling the plug" does no damage to Windows but
can cause extreme damage to the hardware. Actually, the damage can be
caused if there is a voltage spike when power is restored. The hardware
damage can appear to be software damage.

My experience with a failed router (cited earlier in this thread) shows
that even a surge suppressor does not necessarily protect your hardware.
Any time when SoCalEd fails while my PC is running, I immediate shut
off the surge suppressor for my PC, monitor, and printer and unplug my
modem and router (their separate surge suppressor does not have an "off"
switch). When power is restored and I turn everything back on, I run
memory and disc checks to see if my hardware is okay. SoCalEd fails
sufficiently often that I now have a list of clocks and other devices
that must be reset and those that must be at least checked.

--
David E. Ross
http://www.rossde.com/

Paraphrasing Mark Twain, who was quoting someone else:
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and
alternative truths.