At the end of my wits. Please help w/ standby&recover issue

[johndaye]

When ever I resume from standby (s3) and open sage the computer crashes. Sometimes I get a VPU recover message (9800pro) & send a report to ATI & my system goes into software decoding--sometimes the screen just goes black and nothing will happen. Ctl Alt Del doesn't work, no blue screen, no nothing.
I am running win2k & sage 2.2.8 on a Amd64 3000+, 512mb ram, 250pvr, with latest drivers for everything.

I have tried completely reinstalling sage, switching video & audio decoders, switching ati drivers (used latest cats and tried 5.1), and switching from VMR to Overlay. There are no error logs in my sagetv directory.

I don't know what to do next. It usually crashes just after I open a recorded tv show or start to watch something live. Sometimes it dies even as I am scrolling through menu's. I can't get any other program (Zoom Plyr. for example) to crash the computer out of standby. I used to try to look in Event Viewer for strange entries but never saw anything interesting, although now one of the logs is corrupted according to windows and I don't know how to refresh it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, this is my last effort before reinstalling windows completely.
Thanks
JohnDaye

[korben_dallas]

S3 is pretty hard on a PC. You have to have all certified drivers and everything just right for all the hardware to wakeup or reinitialize.

Are you certain SageTV is causing the problem? For instance, wakeup the PC and try using some other programs like WMP, your internet browser, or a game. Because it may be a sleepy piece of hardware causing the crash, not SageTV.

[jptaz]

Also look into SageWake, not an ideal solution, but one I and others have used for a long time since SageTV still does an inadequate job of handling power management. I have SageWake close SageTV on sleep and it restarts it on wake.

[s. schuster]

I'm not a tech or a sage guru or anything -- but what you are experiencing sounds similiar to what I experienced. I really wanted the power management thing to work and kept trading out parts until I created the same black screen error/lockup on a whole new set of hardware -- only thing that was the same the ram -- two sticks of 256 pc2700. The windows ram tester software showed one of the sticks to be bad. You might just want to test things using http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp.

[Alyus]

I tried opening several apps. I used WMP and Zoom Player to play some recorded shows w/ no problems. I d/l'd the memory test program and will try that next. I'll keep you guys updated. I've used sage wake before--what makes it less than ideal?
Thanks for the suggestions thus far
JohnDaye/Alyus

[johndaye]

Well its not my memory. The test went fine. I tried reinstalling directx (just for the heck of it) and that didn't help either. I tried running the service as different users, to no avail. I also tried disabling the sage tv service (in prep for sagewake) and it crashes even without using it.
The only good news is I found some minidump files. But I don't know how to read them or what to look for in them. Would these help?
JohnDaye

[johndaye]

Well I saw someone else was having some trouble with sage crashing and someone else recommended reinstalling Java. So I tried that as well. No cigar. I don't know what else to do. Is all thats left to try a fresh win2k install?
JohnDaye

[korben_dallas]

Or maybe try XP Home SP2?

[s. schuster]

Before you nuke the whole system -- why not remove and redo everything to do with the PVR card. You may even try the card in a different slot just for grins. Weirder stuff has worked . There are some more suggestions here:
http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/faq/s...vr250-350.html

[davin]

The hauppauge cards are wonky when it comes to S3. According to hauppage the S3 state is not supported... their solution is "don't use it". My machine with 2x150MCE will go into standby and come out of it, but the cards don't capture video until I do a hard reset. It may just be the 250 being cranky.

[johndaye]

I started a fresh install on another partition just to see and did notice that the hauppauge drivers aren't certified also. Kind of annoying that hauppauge wouldn't support s3. Leaving the computer on all the time doesn't seem like an attractive option. As soon as this recording finishes I'll try a fresh install of the 250.

XP, xp. hmm. I have a athlon64 so if hauppauge decides to release some 64bit drivers I may eventually go down that route. 2k is just so comfy I've been playing around with the beta that they released some time ago, but w/o the pvr drivers...
Thanks guys, I'll keep you informed.
JohnDaye

[johndaye]

Maybe not so comfy. The same problem occurs with my new 2k install, and after reinstalling the hauppauge card. Now I'm real flustered. I'll probably try a new slot tomorrow. I did notice that the 250 and the video card share an irq. Maybe Ill find a way to change that.

if none of the above helps I guess I'll try a true fresh windoze install.. Maybe a new card, maybe xp..
Time for bed.
JohnDaye

[johndaye]

I just tried opening sage, after a standby, with the hauppauge card disabled in device manager. The computer crashed, and vpu recover reported that it was switching to software decoding. This means it's something else causing the problem, correct? What should I try next?
JohnDaye

[gplasky]

I would look at moving to Windows XP. XP is 32 bit so you don't need 64 bit drivers for it. Most vendors will work and certify XP and follow up later with 2000. Usually XP has latest and greatest. If it continues to kick into vpu recover I would think it has to do with the drivers or video card.

Gerry

[davin]

FYI, i am running XP and still have S3 problems with my 150MCE.

[jphhughes]

I have been riding the S3 Roller coaster for almost 2 years now. Prior to the current version of SageTV I was using SageWake which was a very reliable program and worked. However it did not solve the hardware problems of the Hauppauge cards. For instance I had to use another program from Microsoft called Devcon . This program would restart my PVR 350 every time the system came out of standby. It was only recently that I have been using Sage and its "Internal" power Management feature. It works reasonable well but is still not 100% bullet proof. What I mean by that is I can go a week with the system going in and out of standby with no problem then all of a sudden "BLAM" Sage closes down. I am trying to pinpoint a reason for this and if I find it I will file a bug report.

Sorry I could not be of more help but I would suggest that the prblem most likley is in the driver and the hardware for either the video card or capture card. I think its a waste of time to do a fresh reinstall of Win2K.

[johndaye]

Wow. I had no idea that this was such a prevelant issue. I have not reinstalled the os yet, and I don't think I will. One thing that throws me is that nothing else crashes the system, just sage. I'll try a video game next to see if that does it. On the flip side, the computer records things after coming out of standby-its just when I open the UI that things go haywire. This just seems like such a vital part of PVR'ing, but I'm not a programmer so I wont rant about how things should be.

About XP, when 64bit drivers come out and the software to take advantage of it I'll probably upgrade. That it might fix this isn't compelling enough.

jphhughes- this devcon program. Do you think I might have some luck with it? What were the drawbacks?

Thank you guys. The reason I decided to use sage was for the 'community' and I'm glad I did.

JohnDaye

[jphhughes]

Devcon was required becasue at that stage of Sage development it did not do a good job of restarting the capture card. So when it resumed from standby you would have a blank screen. This restart of the capture card has now been incorporated in SageTv. So I don't think it will help you . If standby works outside of sageTV without any problems then it looks like your porblem lies when using SageTV. Keep in mind that when using SageTV you are also using the Capture card and the Video Card and associated drivers. Make sure you are using the current drivers for the Hauppauge 250. Also the many different hardware configuration make de-bugging this type of problem very difficult. Good luck.

[cmaffia]

I am having SageTV 4.0/Standby issues.. seems to only happen when I use FSE. When SageTV is woken... 50% of the time I get a video playback error.. seems that sometimes the capture card is not resetting or being reset properly... the only time this does not happen is when I disable FSE (Something that I rather not have to do because of the vast PQ improvement I get) Will MS Devcon.exe help this issue and if so... how do I implement Devcon.exe to do this?
Thanks

Originally Posted by jphhughes

Devcon was required becasue at that stage of Sage development it did not do a good job of restarting the capture card. So when it resumed from standby you would have a blank screen. This restart of the capture card has now been incorporated in SageTv. So I don't think it will help you . If standby works outside of sageTV without any problems then it looks like your porblem lies when using SageTV. Keep in mind that when using SageTV you are also using the Capture card and the Video Card and associated drivers. Make sure you are using the current drivers for the Hauppauge 250. Also the many different hardware configuration make de-bugging this type of problem very difficult. Good luck.

[jphhughes]

Are you also using SagetV service. The reason I ask is that I did experiences resume from standby problem when using service mode. I just stopped using it and everything has been ok. I use FSE as well with no resume from standby problems. As regards Devcon its been a long time since I used it. If you search the old threads there are some good examples of it use.

If you can duplicate the problem then I would recomment that your report it as a bug. The real solution is to get the folks at Fry/Sage to get this to work right with Standby.