100% CPU and black screen upon loading

[sabre]

Hi all,

Well, when i just about had sage set up to function on an acceptable level, a new issue comes up.

When i got home i see that the computer rebooted during the day. and now when i start sage, it goes thru the set up as normal, but once it should go to the menu screen, it just goes black, and the CPU is full throttle 100%.

I replaced with an old props file, but that did not do it after rebooting a few times. I made no system changes over the last couple days, focusing more on extending the remote.

System specs:

PIII, 600MHz, Shuttle AV61 (VIA Apollo pro) mobo
512MB RAM
PVR 250 card (16)
Chaintech Nvidia Geforce4 MX440 64MB video
Sound blaster live 5.1 audio
120 GB seagate HDD
This is dedicated HTPC


Weak, yes, but when running fine CPU was at 40% and only minor stutters on screen. Before i go and rebuild the whole machine, anyone seen this before and have any ideas? thanks

[YellowBox]

Same problem, similar setup.

Worked fine for months. Until yesterday, when things seemingly went kablooey and started not working. Sage gives me 100% cpu, and after 2 minutes or so, the program goes black and freezes. If I get to switch to LiveTV in those first 2 minutes, it plays continuously just fine, but the controls dont respond, and Ctrl-Alt-Del is my only way out. Tried repair installation, moving the video folder, backing up and resetting my props file. Nada.

PVR250, EPIA MII10000, Morex Venus case, 256MB RAM, 802.11g w/DSL, lotsa hard disk space, dedicated HTPC, and a very frazzled user.

Someone please help. The new fall season is almost here!

[sabre]

removed old files and reinstalled, and was able to get the menu screens, but once i went to hit livetv, it froze, and trying to restart again brings back the same issue.

ughh

[mikbro]

Just to make sure, when you say you removed old files, you uninstalled, deleted the Frey Technologies directory and reinstalled correct?

[Opus4]

... and deleted the old properties file & didn't restore an old copy?

3D Acceleration is disabled?

- Andy

[sabre]

quick update. looks like bad wiz - do not reset directory to old one - make a new one and it worked here. test more thurs

[YellowBox]

Would reinstalling from scratch help, or is it just stabbing in the dark?
Sabre, not sure I understand what you're recommending. Is it just the wiz.bin, or is it a new installation that helped?

I'll screw around with it Thursday. Had enough frustation for one day.

[chrisc16]

This is the exact same problem I had three days ago. If I delete my wiz.bin and props file, Sage works fine, but I really don't want to lose all my settings (and all the work we have done training IR). Is there any way to import some of wiz.bin?

-Chris

[dadams]

I also had this problem. Luckily, I had saved a copy of the wiz.bin file a month back so I wasn't totally at square one.

I am curious. My problem started after I added a library directory and told Sage to refresh the library. After that, I received the 100% utilization and lockup.

Has anyone else tracked it down to a specific problem or does this happen randomly because of file corruption?

[sabre]

yellowbox, yes i did a complete uninstall and then delete frey directory (even cleaned the registry), and then reinstall. When i first did that with a new wiz file, and then set up my video directory to where my existing shows were located it froze up right again, even w/ the fresh wiz. the next time i did it, i tried the default video directory and that worked, so then i pointed to a new directory on my partition (64k) and that seemed to do it (even tho my prior shows are still there - wondering if i can just move the ones i want to the new directory?).

Yes, lost all prior settings, but may i can use the old bin now that it is pointing to the new directory? or likely that would just put it back to pointing to the old directory and lock it up again.

Bottom line, given other posts as well, it seems like it is a wiz.bin and directory issue- so changing those may help.

[ToxMox]

Originally posted by dadams
I am curious. My problem started after I added a library directory and told Sage to refresh the library. After that, I received the 100% utilization and lockup.

Back in the 1.4.10 days I had a similar issue after adding a library directory. Turned out one of the video files I had in the directory was trying to use a bad codec or something of the sort. I ended up ending the task on Sage and then renaming that library directory so that Sage couldn't find it then Sage ran fine again. I eventually narrowed it down to the one video file and deleted it.

[YellowBox]

Okay, before I do a full reinstall, let me try to figure this out.
I tried an old wiz.bin file, changed nothing else, and I had "only" 60-70% cpu, until it started writing to the wiz.bin (don't know what it was writing, but the file kept getting bigger until it reached the size of my broken wiz.bin), when it started jumping again. Thought maybe it was a result of my accidentally enabling all channels in the channel setup the other day, which was not too long before it started acting up. So I put the channels back to what matched my old props, put back the old wiz.bin, still had 100% cpu. Tried 3 other copies of wiz.bin's (don't ask why I have so many backups), but they all got written to when I started it up, and none of them get me back to even 70% or 80%.
Tried starting with NO wiz.bin, and a new empty video directory, and it was still a no-go. Oh, and I never deleted my props file, because I wasn't quite sure whether that could get corrupted or not.
If my only other option is to do a fresh install, how do I get my old files back into Sage? And is there any way to keep my favorites, or is that all in wiz.bin?

Lordy, lordy. I've never typed "wiz.bin" so much in my life. Sage was so stable, so trustworthy, so innocuous. And now, it's become just another pain in the ass piece of software to deal with.

[KoolKat_Milw]

I too am having the black screen of doom and 100% CPU usage on an Athlon 1GHz. It happens everytime I load sage up so I decided to reinstall completely....meaning I deleted the entire sage directory. Sage started up and I configured my tuner. Everything was going ok and then BAM! 100% cpu usage


This sucks

-KoolKat

[KoolKat_Milw]

Found the problem!! It was a show recorded by Sage....one of my favorites actually. Once I deleted it....everything was ok. I'm guessing it got corrupted somehow.


All is well in the universe!

-KoolKat

[rrussell]

Kat - how did you locate which file it was?

[KoolKat_Milw]

I noticed the problem on Thursday and everything was ok on Wednesday. So I figured it must have been a recording from late Wednesday night or Thursday. There were only a 3 recording so I just blew away all three......not very scientific, but effective

-KoolKat

[rrussell]

HAH. Man, you're a genius

I deleted the latest recording and everything's fine.

How WEIRD.

[sabre]

Great news guys. So it looks like one bad file can mess up the system. That would be consistent with having to point to a new directory. instead, just have to find the bad file.

[rrussell]

I added a "feature request" to the master feature request thread asking for perhaps a startup log file that would indicate the LAST mpg it was scanning, so we can maybe see where it gets stuck.

Eliminate some of the guesswork...

[YellowBox]

Nope, didn't do it. One by one, I moved my video files to another directory, in backwards chronological order, trying Sage in between each move. I went back a week and a half before I just decided to rename the directory, and it was still a no-go. 100% cpu, all the way.

Is there something else you guys did that I'm missing? Anything with wiz.bin, properties file, something?

(By the way, I don't have a "black screen". It looks fine when it starts up, but freezes anyway. I hope this is the same problem you guys have with the same simple fix.)