Slow Response (Skip Forward, High CPU Utilization)

[chaninator]

Hey folks,

My SageTV has been extremely stable for years (3 or 4) until last week. My issue is similar to this one:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47186

Except I am NOT using an extender.

Whenever skipping forward or backward (10s or 2.5min) the spinning circle appears (9 times out of 10) for 2 or 3 seconds before playback resumes. The other 1 time out of 10, I still experience the delay before playback resumes (no spinning circle). The task manager shows the SageTV process spiking to 99% utilization before playback resumes. I also noticed that playback of AVI files taken from my Canon S5 IS are extremely jerky (audio is OK...but the video is almost unwatchable).

I began rolling back the most recent changes I could think of. Things were fine on Monday, May 24...I first noticed this on Wednesday May 26.

I uninstalled the latest MS Update for Windows XP (KB981793)
I increased my available recording space from 80 gigs to 230 gigs and ran a defrag
Scanned for malware (clean)

No change.

I began changing the combinations of renders and decoders (NB: I'd NEVER touched these in years).

Still no change.

Then out of desperation, I updated my ATI video driver, ran CCleaner, and I reverted my Java from 1.6 update 20 to 1.6 update 18.

The delay and spinning circle are still there (kids and spousal unit find it annoying...as do I).

Here's where it gets...interesting. I have a LAN attached (GigE) D-Link DNS-323 NAS with 2TB of storage (I use of strictly for backup and archiving). I copied a few of my recent recordings (3gigs to 10gigs in size) up to my NAS and decided to play them from there. The skip forward and back seem fine (almost like there is something wrong with my local 1TB drive that all my media is on???). I'll have to do more troubleshooting later tonight, but I am currently stumped. Maybe this is the excuse I need to rebuild and upgrade .

Setup Details (don't laugh...I am living proof you don't need tons of horsepower to run SageTV and playback Blu-Ray):

HTPC: MSI MB, AMD Athlon 3000+, 1GB RAM running XP SP3 and SageTV 6.6.2 (latest I think)
Video Card: ATI Radeon 3470
Audio: Asus Xonar Slim
System Drive: Seagate 500GB SATA
Media Storage: Seagate 1000GB SATA
Capture Device: Hauppauge WinTV-250 Analog

I also run AnyDVD (don't we all?).

I am all ears to any suggestions. Thanks!

Last "interesting" tidbit, the skip fwd and back via Placeshifter on my laptop via wi-fi seems more responsive than directly on my HTPC??

[chaninator]

Was finally able to download install Western Digital's "Data Lifeguard Diagnostics". When I ran a "quick test" on my media drive, I got:

"Quick Test on drive 2 did not complete!
Status code =07 (failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 97 (Unknown Test)
SMART self-test did not complete on drive 2!)."

Does not really inspire confidence.

My bet is on a bad drive. I'll be calling WD tech support. This is one of their "Green" drives. My HTPC is on 7x24...the drive is just over 1 year old...so I have lots of runway for warranty.

[chaninator]

Here's an update. I tried:

1.Swapping my SATA cable on the suspect drive. It made no difference. The WDLG diagnostic still failed and the video was still jerky

2. Tried another SATA port on my MB. Interestingly enough, the video seemed to improve but the diagnostice still failed. WD tech support said I should RMA the drive. Likely bad sectors.

[bmac.to]

I have had similar behaviour since I setup my HTPC a couple of years ago. For me it only happens if playback has been on for a while (several minutes at least). The second ff/rew/skip in a back to back ff/rew/skip never exhibit this behaviour. Oh yeah, this problem only exists for EVR rendering (it doesnt occur for VMR9).

The solution for me was to remove all power save options in the Power control panel (crank everything to 100%). I backed out of this fix because I would rather get some of the power savings.

I believe it only occurs on EVR because the amount of CPU required is less than VMR9 which means the system goes into a deeper power save mode (this means it takes longer recover to a higher power mode when you hit the ff/rew/skip button).

Hopefully it helps a bit.
________
HANDJOB VIDEOS