Rainmeter internet connection on boot

[Wallboy]

I've noticed after rebooting my PC, sometimes I have to manually refresh any skin that uses WebParser. The errors in the log show "The server name or address cannot be resolved" for ANY skins that use a WebParser measure. After manually refreshing each skin, everything works fine. It's almost like Rainmeter loads before Windows has finished loading it's networking processes/services.

This occurs around 50% of reboots. Not sure if it's just something on my end or not. Any ideas? Thanks.

[jsmorley]

That is certainly what it sounds like. Kinda strange, as standing up the network is one of the first things Windows does. Do you have some additional software you are using to support your network that isn't just the normal embedded Windows functionality?

In any case, there is no real easy solution.

You could use a utility like Startup Delayer and set Rainmeter to wait a handful of seconds after the boot is completed to launch

If you are running Windows Vista or later, you could have a measure in one of your skins that uses the SysInfo plugin and the INTERNET_CONNECTIVITY option to test for a connection to the internet, and only when it returns "1", have it !Refresh * to refresh all skins. Be careful about an endless loop here... This thread shows how you can avoid that:

http://rainmeter.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=100888#p100888

Probably some other kludge I haven't thought of, but nothing super easy. It's a strange problem if you are not running some external program that activates some "driver" for a WIFI connection or prompts for a proxy password or something after Windows boots.

[Wallboy]

I run Windows 7 and have tweaked a lot of services and processes to only run what I actually need. And there is no other third party software between Windows and my router. Maybe it's just my network adapter firmware itself on the motherboard that is slow to load. Though I would think any device drivers would be loaded before any applications in Windows would start?

By the looks of it I haven't seen anyone else notice this issue, so it's probably something only on my system. I'll look for some updated firmware for my network adapter and run some boot traces to see if there is some delay in a network driver on boot.

[moshi]

happens to me as well. but i boot only once a week or less, so it hardly bothers me.

[jsmorley]

I tested with an approach that waits for an internet connection and refreshes all skins one time when Rainmeter is started, but there is an issue with that. If you DO have internet connectivity when Rainmeter is started, it will immediately refresh all skins. The rub with this is that if you have any Lua scripts that take longer than a second or so to run, it can hang the interface between Rainmeter and Lua. That would require a restart of Rainmeter to fix, and that gets us back to an endless loop, even if slightly manual.

I guess some kind of Startup Delayer utility is the safer way to go.

[Wallboy]

I built a new computer and the problem was even worse on the new computer with everything loading much faster before Windows can even obtain an internet connection for Rainmeter. So I had to end up manually refreshing each skin that used WebParser almost always after a boot.

So I'm guessing it's my router that is slow to obtain a connection for Windows on boot if not many others are having this issue. Anyways I finally said enough is enough and here is my simple fix:

Code: Select all

[MeasureCheckForInternet]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=SysInfo
SysInfoType=INTERNET_CONNECTIVITY
UpdateDivider=1

[MeasureCalcInternet]
Measure=Calc
Formula=MeasureCheckForInternet
IfCondition=MeasureCalcInternet = 1
IfTrueAction=[!EnableMeasure WebParserMeasure][!CommandMeasure WebParserMeasure Update][!UpdateMeasure WebParserMeasure][!DisableMeasure MeasureCheckForInternet][!DisableMeasure MeasureCalcInternet]
UpdateDivider=1

I just set the WebParser measure to Disabled=1 and use the measures above to enable it as soon as we get a connection. No having to refresh any skins. Works great.