Uknown CPU usage and stutters

[Watter]

I'm having a few issues (yet again ) with my SageTV setup and I hope one of you smart people out there can give me a hand. Here are the relavant system specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2000
Asus A7N8X motherboard
512mb PC2700 DDR memory
ATI Radeon 9500 128mb
Hauppauge PVR 350
Windows 2000

I use this box for one thing and onr thing only, SageTV, so there's no non-SageTV related software loaded on it. I use the hardware decoder on the PVR 350 out to a television (picture is so much better than anything I've been able to get in software).

For several months I had a pretty solid setup, but lately, I've had problem after problem. My current issue is that whenever SageTV is recording, my CPU usage jumps to between 25-30% and my control of the SageTV UI becomes very laggy, almost to the pooit of being unusable. There are a couple of things wrong here that I can't quite explain:

1) It's not the SageTV process itself that jumps to 35-30% CPU usage. Its the overall system CPU usage that reaches this high. The SageTV process use an almost negligible amount of CPU cycles.

2) My task manager does not list the the process that is is taking up CPU cycles. I can see on the performance tab that a certain amount of the CPU cycles are being used, but if I look at the process window, there are no process being listed as using those cycles.

3) 30% CPU usage, while way too high when all SageTV is doing is recording a show (not even viewing), still leaves plent of room such that the UI shodul not be lagging liek it is. I suspec that there's a more fundamental problem than the CPU usage causing the lag.

4) Even though I use the hardware decoder on the PVR 350, if I hook up a monitor to the machine I can still see software decoded picture. this is to be expected as every time I attempt to disable the software decoding in the sage.proeprties file, SageTV (up on restarting) has all kinds of problems. Anyway, the software decoded video stream stutters all over the place. About every 3 seconds, a pause occurs. My hardware decoded stream to the television is fine.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled the hauppauge drivers to no avail. I'm at a loss. If no other solution can be found, I guess I can wipe the system (again, for the third time in a month ) and start from scratch.

I don't beg often, but I'm begging now... anyone have any ideas?

-Watter

[mikbro]

1. What are your hard drive specs, and what is the sector size of the partition you are using to store your shows? Have you tried defragmenting your hard drives? It is generally recommended here that partitions used for show storage for formatted wtih 64k sectors.

2. The Process tab in Task Manager should show you exactly what process is using cpu at any given time, not sure I understand why it is not showing you...

If this is a recent development, what if anything has changed? New hardware, new software, new external devices such as USB devices?

I know you this is dedicated Sage machine, try out some other apps within the OS to see if you ge that same lag.

[Watter]

1) 7200 rpm HD - not using 64k sectors, but, and no offense intended, from what I know about hard drives and NT file system usage, I think that that particular optimization is highly overrated. In any case, the hard drive in its current configuration worked fine for the first two months I had this setup running.

2) You are of course correct. Under normal circumstances the process tab should be showing which process is utilizing the CPU and to what degree, but in this case it isn't. I'll see my overall CPU usage being steady in that 25-30% range and simultaneously see the "System Idle Process" claim it's using 98%. Naturally, that doesn't add up.

3) Yes this is a recent development. My SageTV setup ran smoothly for about two months. Then, about a month ago I started having problems. The only changes I had made since building the system was to install the newer versions of SageTV (release versions - I didn't use the betas) whent he came out. The instability with SageTV that started a month ago did not correlate with the 1.4.10 release, so I dont' think I can blame that release in any way. However, since the general instability started, I have made many, many changes to the system (new drivers, old drivers, hacked drivers, case fans, memory timings, etc.) in order to try to get back to a stable state.

The specific problem I brought up in this thread is just the latest in a long line of problems since the general instability began a month ago. What's most frustrating is that none of the issues appear to be related. There doesn't seem to be a "root" caused. I'll fix a problem and run fine for a few days or a week and then a completely different issue will pop up.

-Watter

[mikbro]

The Taskmgr issue is disturbing... I would try to isolate that problem if for no other reason than it is something that is easily identifiable. I would try WinTasks 4 from http://www.liutilities.com/. This tool provides a much more in depth analysis of what is running on your pc than Taskmanager does.

The only thing that comes to mind would be a virus that is sucking up processing time and keeping itself under the radar, Wintasks should help you identify if that is the case.

If that gives you no joy, I would try the unscientific approach of starting from scratch from the OS up. Shouldn't really take too long. You may also wan to invest in Norton Ghost to image your boot drive once you have a stable platform so you always have a clean image to fall back on in the future.

[Watter]

Originally posted by mikbro
If that gives you no joy, I would try the unscientific approach of starting from scratch from the OS up. Shouldn't really take too long. You may also wan to invest in Norton Ghost to image your boot drive once you have a stable platform so you always have a clean image to fall back on in the future.

This is what I ended up doing... again. So far so good. Let hope it lasts.

-Watter