Going Back to 1.28 from Beta 1.33

[rhsmcc]

SageTV is an excellent program. I’ve however had to go back to 1.28 because of consistent lock ups. The program seems to behave just fine then 20 – 40 minutes later the computer makes a 1 second machine gun noise and then a black screen or a frozen screen and locks up. Can happen playing back a recorded program, watching a live program or even when the menu screen is just left on. In the sleep mode it seems to be fine. I’ve tried it on a Win 2000 and Win XP machine. When I reboot and go back into Sage I have to go through the entire setup because the properties file was wiped out. I’ve tried different mpeg decoders and removed the programs and done fresh installs. No difference. I’m not quite sure on the significance of the sage?.txt files that are generated but the last line always seems to read “seeker waiting for 29 minutes or seeker waiting for 62 minutes”. Does this mean anything? The menu in 1.33 beta is more professional looking. One thing I did have trouble with at times was being able to tell which show was highlighted in the guide. In 1.28 there is a more distinct color change so you can tell were your selected show is. To me program stability and simplicity is paramount. My 10 year old figured out how to use this program in about 2 minutes.:(

[Mark Lamutt]

rhsmcc,

The Sage_#.txt files are created everytime you start SageTV (and SageRecorder) up. The one named 0 is the most recent, followed by 1,2,3...etc. If you still have your SageTV_0.txt file from when this happened, please send it up to Jeff, either attached to a message, or emailed. Also, if you have a corrupted version of your Sage.Properties file, please send that as well.

As for program stability, you always take the risk of crashes when you run beta software. Many, many things have changed since 1.28, and changes can always cause instability. That's why it's still beta software, and hasn't been released officially yet.

[JJarmoc]

Out of curiousity, have you run a scandisk or a defrag? That machinegun noise sounds to me like the HD thrashing, which could be due to disk errors.

[laurenglenn]

Does your computer have a SoundBlaster Live! sound card? That's a problem I used to have until I installed a Via Latency patch (which I mentioned in another post on one of the SageTV forums). They mentioned that if you have an AMD processor, VIA chipset, and a SoundBlaster Live! audio card that this fix would stop that from happening.

As of installing this patch, I have yet to have that problem.....

Just a thought....
Lauren

[rhsmcc]

Just a quick update on my situation. I had gone back to 1.28 and started having similar recurrent problems. I had to look into some of the other changes I had made. ie: added 200 Gig HD and updated ATI Video drivers and software. Jjarmoc : Good idea but everything ok. But as a side note I did change over to a 200 Gig WD HD and had repeated data corruption that occurred in Windows 2000 with SR3. This also occurred with windows xp without SR1 because they are not compatible with drives larger that 137 Gig. In Windows 2000 specific registry alterations need to be done. And with Windows XP you need SR1 installed. No I don’t have a Sound Blaster Live.

What ultimately was the culprit was the ATI All In Wonder 7500 with the latest catalyst drivers installed. And maybe not so much just the ATI card but its combination with the Biostar Socket A MB and SageTV. I switched over to a PNY Geforce FX 5200 card and now beta 1.33 works.

I will be saving my sage_*.txt files from now on.