Periodic Freeze

[tahoebob]

Hi,

After successfully using SageTV 1.3.8 about 1 1/2 years on a Compaq/AMD setup with 3 x Hauppage 250 cards, I decided to upgrade and built a system from scratch.

New Setup:
Sage Server:
Case: Silverstone LaScala LC-10M with 480 PSU
MOBO: Intel D925SCVLK with SATA support and integrated Gigabit Ethernet
CPU: Intel P4 520 2.8 Ghz, with ThermalTake Jungle 512 HeatSink/Fan
Memory: 1 GB (2 x 512MB Kingston ValueRam 512 DDR2 4200)
OS: WinXP Home with SP2
HD: 2 x 400 GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA - Primary Drive Partitioned with Sage Library formatted at 64K cluster size.
DVD: Dual Layer NEC Burner ND-3560A
PVR: 2 x Hauppage 250, One to premium Cable Box, one to standard cable
latest Hauppage drivers.
Sage: v 2.2.7

Network Encoder:
Dell Dimension 8400 WinXP Home SP2,
1 x 400 GB Hard Drive
2 x Hauppage 250, one to premium cable box, one to standard cable.
SageRecorder v 1.5.6

Exceeding my expectations hardware and software installations worked the first time. SageTV and SageRecorder both working fine. No problems recording or viewing.

The problem: About once a week - could be 5 days to 10 days, the system completely hangs. The only way to get it back is to do a hardware reset. Then it works fine again for 5-10 days. Since the system is generally unattended, I'm not sure what is causing this - hardware, WinXP or Sage. I have automatic updates and personal firewall turned off. The reason this is such an annoyance is that I often leave for 2-3 weeks at a time and I come back to find the system hung and having only recorded the first 5 days or so of scheduled recordings.

I would appreciate any guidance as to how to solve or circumvent this problem.

Thanks,

tahoebob.

[mdmint]

Have you checked the system Event log to see if anything is logged and what it's doing when the hang occurs? Right now there's virtually nothing to go on troubleshooting wise. Being a new hardware and software build it could literally be almost anything including any component hardware wise. New parts don't mean good burned in fully tested parts!

Looking at your config and barring any hints from Event log I'd pull one of the two DIMMS and just start basic troubleshooting. Observe results. If no lockup a couple weeks put the pulled DIMM back and pull the other one etc.

Do you have any system stress test software you can hammer it with and attempt to recreate a lockup?

[tahoebob]

mdmint,

Thanks for the reply. I've checked the system event log as you suggested and the following entry appears at approximately the same time as the freezes (I haven't kept a precise log to date):


Type date time Source Category Event User
Warning “date” “time” W32Time None 36 N/A

The time service has not been able to synchronize the system time for 49152 seconds because none of the time providers has been able to provide a usable time stamp. The system clock is unsynchronized.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

The link above provides no useful information.

I'll begin checking out this system clock issue, but if you have any info off the top of your head, I'd appreciate your input.

Thanks

[tahoebob]

Hopefully this might help others that experience a similiar problem. As stated earlier, the system would freeze up on a weekly basis when W32TIME failed to sync properly. I changed the server it was attempting to sync with. When the system synced the time WITHOUT error, the system still froze up. After reading in other forum posts that I was syncing on a daily basis with the Sage Server, I realized that I didn't really need the weekly sync so I unchecked the box. I've now run a month with no problems. I had read elsewhere that W32TIME doesn't cause crashes/freezes, but eliminating it seems to have solved my problem. I'm not sure why but it worked.