PVR 350 Stability Issues

[roco]

Ok - so as per a lot of my previous posts and responses I am resolving some issues and now have Sage TV more stable then ever.....but I still have one big problem:

Whenever I am watching a prerecorded show while sage is recording another, my computer will bluescreen as soon as sage finishes recording the other show - i would imagine this happens when sage is writting the file to the disk. Ok sage rockstars whats the fix?

I should also say that originally when sage it didn't work for me out of the box i was ready to send it all back, but this forum of users has won me over. thanks for all the great support everyone, and please help me solve this last issue!!!

Cheers, Roco

System
Win 2k
P4 1.8
512 Mem
160 GB NTFS HD in 64K chunks

[krutaw]

Originally posted by roco
Ok - so as per a lot of my previous posts and responses I am resolving some issues and now have Sage TV more stable then ever.....but I still have one big problem:

Whenever I am watching a prerecorded show while sage is recording another, my computer will bluescreen as soon as sage finishes recording the other show - i would imagine this happens when sage is writting the file to the disk. Ok sage rockstars whats the fix?

Okay, I'm no rockstar, however, I'll take a shot at this one. How many PCI slots do you have on your motherboard? Also, is your videocard PCI or AGP? How are the cards arranged? You probably see where I'm leading with this... I've read several threads that mention that you should keep the pvr card as far away from the video card pci slot wise as possible.

Anyway, let me know, I'm more than happy to help.

[roco]

1 AGP (Video Card installed)
6 PCI (350 in slot 2)

no ther cards are istalled.



Hauppage Card is in PCI #2.

This is the only PCI Card I have plugged in!

[krutaw]

Originally posted by roco
1 AGP (Video Card installed)
6 PCI (350 in slot 2)

no ther cards are istalled.



Hauppage Card is in PCI #2.

This is the only PCI Card I have plugged in!

I could be completely off here, but I'm sure I've read somewhere in the threads that the card should be as far away from AGP card as possible.

[roco]

so this is an interesting idea and one i will follow through on but why would this be a solution to my problem: bluescreen when 350 finishes recording while i am watching something else?

[stanger89]

The AGP and first PCI slots usually share and IRQ which can cause problems with many things. It doesn't necessarily have to be the farthest PCI slot, just not the first one.

It's typically noticeable with Capture/Lan/Raid/Sound cards.

[gplasky]

Try setting it up in a different PCI slot. This will probably change the IRQ on the card to something different. Another thing you might try is disabling ports you don't need thru the BIOS. For instance I have disabled my printer port and both serial ports because they are not used. This will also free up more IRQ's and increase the chances that the card will find a happy IRQ.

Gerry

[roco]

ok.....so if i do this, will i need to uninstall or reinstall anything? are there any preparations i should make?

[stanger89]

You might as well try without, Windows should properly detect and reinstall everything properly. If that doesn't work, then reinstall.

Might as well back up your SageTV dir just in case.

[gplasky]

If I were doing it I would normally make sure Sage isn't running, uninstall all the Happauge software and drivers and run their hwclear utility. Make sure Sage doesn't start when you starup your PC and then shutdown. Move the card, startup. When Windows finds the card, point it to the drivers. Run setup and install any other Happauge software like video decoder. Bring up Sage and see if it sees your card. If not, backup prperties and wiz file to another directory. Uninstall Sage. Do a clean install, configure and test. If OK, move your backups back into directory and test.

Gerry

[roco]

what a drag..........i tried every PCI port and the one time i found the hardware resting on a separate IRQ from the rest of my devices and video card (IRQ 9) , as soon as I install the drivers it jumps from IRQ 5 to IRQ 9! UHHGGG. Is there some way to force install this on a certain IRQ?

Rob

[stanger89]

I just looked and my 250 is on IRQ 22. I think the important thing is having it in a slot that doesn't share IRQs, this can be different that what windows reports, windows shows virtual IRQs (ie 22 isn't a real IRQ those only go to 12 I think).

[roco]

where did you find that system information?

[roco]

system information?

[gplasky]

Go to Device Manager. Find your device. Right-click and go to properties. Go to resources tab and look for Interrupt request.


Gerry

[roco]

this gives me windows assigned "virtual IRQ's" (read above)

i am looking for system level IRQ's as mentioned.

-roco

[roco]

i have tried all my pci slots and can not get it to rest on any other IRQ except 9 (the one my graphics card is on).

[gplasky]

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I would think system level IRQ you would see from your BIOS boot screen where it shows all your devices. When you uninstalled your drivers did you run the hwclear utility to get rid of all the Happauge drivers settings? Changing your slot should of changed the IRQ at least once.


Gerry

[roco]

hwclear'ed every time i switched the card slot. after the install it always puts the card in IRQ 9.

[Crowdx42]

Try installing Standard PC in the device manager and tis will disable the virtual irq's and you can see the irq's and Win2k will not force a load of hardware to share irq's.
Patrick