Verizon Call Assistant using up massive amounts of cycles
Jolard
Newbie

I am not sure if it is a memory leak, or what the problem is, but I woke up this morning with my processor running at around 60% capacity. So of course I look to see what is causing the problem, and it is VZWidgetengine (I think that was what it was called). I run a google search, and it looks like it is the Verizon Call Assistant. I try and close down the assistant (or even open it) and it just sits there in my system tray frozen. I cancel the VZWidgetEngine, and that fixes my problem.

Anyone else? Is this just a random occurance? Or am I going to need to shut down the call assistant every so often to make sure it behaves. I do think this is still inbeta, so I am not upset about it, just want to know how to deal with it. 

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Re: Verizon Call Assistant using up massive amounts of cycles
Justin46
Legend

I guess you did not do a search here at this forum first because this has been discussed in the past at length   Smiley Happy 

Some people do in fact experience what you have described, others, like me, do not. No one yet that I know of has been able to determine what causes the problem, or what the solution might be. I know some people have reported the problem to the Call Assistant help line.

Maybe one reason I don't see the problem is that I turn off my PC every night, I just see no reason to let it run all the time.

I like having the Call Assistant, works well for me, although I do wish they would deliver some of the stuff they said they were going to, plus some of the enhancement requests I sent to them. But for now, it works for me.

__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
IMG 1.6.0, Build 06.89
Keller, TX 76248

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Verizon Call Assistant massive memory leak
allenvm3
Enthusiast - Level 2

I recently signed up for Verizon Call Assistant and installed the desktop client (v. 2.7.56) on my Windows XP SP3 laptop. 

As has been reported by others in earlier postings (as long as a year ago) I have a massive memory leak - even when the Call Assistant app is sitting idle.  Because of the leak, the computer becomes almost useless within a few hours of bootup.  (I am also somewhat surprised that there is no menu option in the client to disable auto-start on bootup, which would help alot!)

The memory problems are severe enough that I always shut down the client as soon as I boot up, and will be deinstalling it if I get no help from this posting. 

Has this issue been addressed yet?  (I would hope so, given the length of time since it was first reported, and the severity of the issue!) 

If not, when will it be addressed?

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Re: Verizon Call Assistant using up massive amounts of cycles
dckidd
Enthusiast - Level 1

I was having the same problem as original poster, running Call Assistant the file "VZVidgetEngine.exe" was running with a constant 40-42% CPU usage.    I did some digging around with process monitoring and then file monitoring tools.    Once I ran

the file monitoring tool, I saw right away that VZVidgetEngine.exe was in an endless loop looking at the file "rasphone.pbk" (which on my system was an empty 0K file), then it would move through several other directories looking for *.pbk and it wasn't

finding any on my system.

What the file rasphone.pbk would contain are dial-up (or dsl, or vpn..) connection settings.    These would be the settings that

you would find by bringing up control panel, opening the "Internet Options" panel, and going to the "Connections" tab.    In my case, I connect directly through a home network, so I had no "Connections" set.     One would think that if the file wasn't found

the first time, then VZVidgetEngine.exe would stop looking for it, but that isn't the case and this is a pretty sloppy programming job.    In order to confirm that this is what is happening on your system, you can look for the rasphone.pbk file

(normal location for this file is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk --

or just use the windows search tool to find the file) and if the file is 0K in size, you're likely having the same problem as I was.

THE WORKAROUND, at least for me anyway, was to create a dummy connection (I created a "Broadband Connection" with bogus information), and VERY IMPORTANT you want to select the "Never Dial a connection" option so that if for some reason you

are not connected to your normal direct network connection, the system doesn't start trying to connect using this dummy connection that you set up.    Just having something in the file appears to have satisfied "VZVidgetEngine.exe", which now only occasionally shows CPU usage of less than 1%.  

I don't have the patience to deal with support, but if anyone else wants to try to explain my findings to them with hopes that the information might make its way back to their developers, feel free to do so.    I have subscribed to this topic, so I will get email notification if anyone has anything further to add or questions (no guarantees that I'll be able to answer..)

Re: Verizon Call Assistant using up massive amounts of cycles
Justin46
Legend

@dckidd wrote:

I was having the same problem as original poster, running Call Assistant the file "VZVidgetEngine.exe" was running with a constant 40-42% CPU usage.    I did some digging around with process monitoring and then file monitoring tools.    Once I ran

the file monitoring tool, I saw right away that VZVidgetEngine.exe was in an endless loop looking at the file "rasphone.pbk" (which on my system was an empty 0K file), then it would move through several other directories looking for *.pbk and it wasn't

finding any on my system.

What the file rasphone.pbk would contain are dial-up (or dsl, or vpn..) connection settings.    These would be the settings that

you would find by bringing up control panel, opening the "Internet Options" panel, and going to the "Connections" tab.    In my case, I connect directly through a home network, so I had no "Connections" set.     One would think that if the file wasn't found

the first time, then VZVidgetEngine.exe would stop looking for it, but that isn't the case and this is a pretty sloppy programming job.    In order to confirm that this is what is happening on your system, you can look for the rasphone.pbk file

(normal location for this file is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Network\Connections\Pbk --

or just use the windows search tool to find the file) and if the file is 0K in size, you're likely having the same problem as I was.

THE WORKAROUND, at least for me anyway, was to create a dummy connection (I created a "Broadband Connection" with bogus information), and VERY IMPORTANT you want to select the "Never Dial a connection" option so that if for some reason you

are not connected to your normal direct network connection, the system doesn't start trying to connect using this dummy connection that you set up.    Just having something in the file appears to have satisfied "VZVidgetEngine.exe", which now only occasionally shows CPU usage of less than 1%.  

I don't have the patience to deal with support, but if anyone else wants to try to explain my findings to them with hopes that the information might make its way back to their developers, feel free to do so.    I have subscribed to this topic, so I will get email notification if anyone has anything further to add or questions (no guarantees that I'll be able to answer..)


Wow, that is interesting! I have never had the problem you were experiencing though, and I wonder why. I just went and looked for the file where you suggested, and found rasphone.pbk is there, but 2k in size. It was created in 2003 (why? I don't know), but was updated in the last two weeks. It is a text file, and now contains a definition for a PVN connection that I defined last week while playing around. So it is now 2k and not 0 bytes, I don't know whether it might have been 0 before the VPN definition.

Boy, that is a pretty easy fix. I hope the VCA folks will see this topic and fix their product.

__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
QIP6416, IMG 1.6.2, Build 08.58
Keller, TX 76248

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Re: Verizon Call Assistant using up massive amounts of cycles
allenvm3
Enthusiast - Level 2

I gave your suggestion of setting up a dummy connection in "Internet Options" a try, and it solved the problem: no more memory leak, no more excessive CPU usage.  Thank you very much!

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Re: Verizon Call Assistant using up massive amounts of cycles
dckidd
Enthusiast - Level 1

Glad it helped!

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