Extender losing the connection?

[kamp]

Slightly odd behavior with the extender that I'm borrowing from a friend (he got the 300 so he lent me his 200.)

I have the trial version of the software, giving it a good trial before making the purchase, so I'm still kind of new to the setup.

I have the SageTV software (the last beta before the release) running on a Windows XP Home plugged in to the router. The computer is configured to not go to screen saver or shut off the video. It's also configured so that SageTV is a high-priority task.

The hard drive on which the media is stored is connected to my Linux machine and shared via Samba.

The Extender is plugged in to a switch which connects wirelessly to the router via 802.11n.

I haven't seen any problems with the recording portion of things. Everything seems to be recording just fine. However, when I'm playing back through the extender, I'm seeing some odd behavior. When I start up the extender the past couple of days, it can't see the server until I go downstairs and, using my highly-technical debugging skills, jiggle the mouse. Then it's able to connect fine.

Last night, we were watching a show through the extender when about 20-25 minutes in to the playback, the show froze then started playing in what seemed to be double time w/ no sound. I stopped it and restarted the extender and we were able to watch for another 10 minutes when it froze and the extender went black. Restarted the extender, connected to the server watched for about 5 minutes and it froze and went to black again. Restarted the extender and was able to watch the remainder of the show without issues.

Any ideas as to what might be causing this? I'm fine with having to do things like this but it just increases my wife's frustration with a tool if she has to do some configuration or anything before being able to simply enjoy a show (which I understand.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[mguebert]

HD200 from what I understand does not support WOL (wake on lan) very well. It sounds like your PC is going into sleep mode and the HD200 cannot wake it up. The HD300 works much better for WOL from the reading I have done. Make sure your PC is set so that is does not go into hibernate or sleep mode.

[jm987]

Some network cards have the option to not to go to sleep when your computer goes to sleep. The option is set in the device manager of the network card so you can tell the computer to not allow it to go to sleep and see if that helps.

[kamp]

I'll look in to both of those settings and be sure to post how it works. Thanks!

[kamp]

I double-checked the server computer and it was already set to not go to screen saver or go to sleep. I looked in to the NIC settings and unchecked the box to allow the card to go to sleep. I was still seeing the issues, however.

What I did yesterday is manually added the server to the list. Still had the issue after that. I looked at the network settings on the extender and saw a very odd DNS server listed in there. Also, I didn't see the extender in the list of clients for the router. I added the extender to the routers static client list and changed the extender to be statically configured as well. From the quick test last night, it seems to have done the trick. I'll be sure to post if the problem crops up again.

Thanks for the suggestions.