HELP! Sage 2.2.2 Won't Boot any more

[srothwell]

HELP!

I was attempting to install a digital cable box to work with Sage....

I got all the way to the point where Sage was trying to download the EPG when it froze and stayed there for 15 minutes. No matter what I did Sage would not exit out of the setup process. After 10 more minutes of trying to exit out, I killed Sage.

When I now attempt to restart Sage, it getos to "Profiler is initializeing" and just stays at 0..... forever..... it's been 20 minutes.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks for any help.... I'm waiting by the PC for a response.

Best regards,

Stacy

[Cayars]

Let it run for a while and see if it cures itself. I'd give it up to 2 hours. If not then you'll probably have to remove your wiz.bin and see if it will work with the backup. If this to doesn't work then kill both the wiz.bin and backup of the file and let SageTV recreate it. (copy both wiz files out to a safe place first!).

[nielm]

Check for corrupt MPG file:
With Sage shutdown, look for the last recorded MPG in your video directories and move that somewhere outside of your video dirs -- it should have a timestamp of about the time the crash occured

Check for corrup wiz.bin:
With Sage shutdown, try moving wiz.bin and wiz.bak somewhere else to check if they are corrupt... then restart Sage...
If this doesnt help, move them back...
If it does help, restore an older Wiz.bin from your backups

let me know which one works: this might be a faq in the making!

[srothwell]

It was, in fact, recording when this happened. I will try finding the file. In the meantime, here's an update...... BTW what is Profiler anyway?

I have tried to restore from a complete backup I made of the Frey directory about a week ago. It still gets completey stuck at the same place.

The ONLY thing that will allow Sage to boot is to completely erase wiz.bin and let it generate a brand new one.

What I don't understand is why won't Sage work by compltely restoring a perfectly working system from a week ago???

[Opus4]

Is there still network activity? It sounds like perhaps it is trying to download the EPG lineup info. Anyone having a problem connecting to the EPG server?

Edit: I merged these 2 threads after posting this. Correction: I merged the _three_ threads.

- Andy

[srothwell]

I did what Cayars suggested and deleted the mpg file it was recording the first reset took place.

That still did not let the Profiler go past 0%. Then I restored an older sage.properties file and that did it. Sage Booted.

However, we're back to where we started again......

I re-setup the digital cable box and now it is just stuck on getting the EPG data. There LAN lights are blinking but it just sits there.

Stacy

[srothwell]

If the Sage server was down, wouldn't SageTV software eventually time out?

Yes, the digital cable has a lot of channels but not that many.

When I installed the analog cable (85 channels), it took about 4 seconds to get the data.....

At this rate of transfer it must mean Comcast has over 27,000 channels. WOW! I hope some are HD :-)

[srothwell]

Update....

It took over 30 minutes to download the EPG. Even TiVO doesn't take that long!

There must be a problem with the Sge server and with them all in Las Vegas.........

The world is happy again .

thanks for the help

[mls]

Originally Posted by srothwell

When I installed the analog cable (85 channels), it took about 4 seconds to get the data.....

WOW! You must be really lucky there!. I've got 3,000bps Internet service and with an 80 channel line up it's always taken at least 3 minutes (not seconds) to download the EPG line up. Normally it's closer to 5 minutes, and thats the everyday downloads, not the initial first one during setup. The intial first one takes even longer, sometimes 10 minutes, on my end.

Don't know if it's the server on Frey's end or my ISP, but I've never had an 80 channel EPG line up download in only a few seconds like you say you have.

[srothwell]

Originally Posted by mls

WOW! You must be really lucky there!. I've got 3,000bps Internet service and with an 80 channel line up it's always taken at least 3 minutes (not seconds) to download the EPG line up. Normally it's closer to 5 minutes, and thats the everyday downloads, not the initial first one during setup. The intial first one takes even longer, sometimes 10 minutes, on my end.

Don't know if it's the server on Frey's end or my ISP, but I've never had an 80 channel EPG line up download in only a few seconds like you say you have.

I can only relate to when I originally installed with only extended basic analog cable. It littearly took about 4 seconds from the time it said "Please wiat to download" till the next screen was done.

hmmmmm....

[joh3004]

I just got the same problem. And I followed this troubleshooting advice, I moved the wiz.bin file out of the directory and it booted up fine...the only problem is that now all of my recorded tv shows are gone. Is there any way to resolve this issue without losing my shows?

[heffe2001]

Actually, when I set up a new tuner, the CHANNEL LINEUP doesn't take but a few seconds normally. The EPG data takes much, much longer...

[teedublu]

contact tech support and send them your wiz.bin file -- they might be able to fix it.

I run automatic daily backups of wiz.bin (actually the .bak)
-- so I'd never loose more than 1 days worth.

That is something that really should be built-in to Sage -- Just the one .bak file does not cut it!

Same goes for sage.properties.

TW

[joh3004]

I just moved the wiz.bin file to my desktop ran sage for a few minutes and then put the wiz.bin back into the directory and now it works for some reason. I have no idea why. But the profiler did still take longer to load. Now, it loads up like usual. Maybe...the profiler just needed time? I don't know...However I have learned my lesson, need to constantly back up my wiz.bin and sage.properties files...

Is there a way to make this happen automatically? Or do I need to do it manually each time?

[teedublu]

I use a real-time backup program -- DataKeeper (4) that came with PowerQuest DriveImage5. You can find DataKeeper bundled with PowerQuest PartitionMagic8. It is not included with Norton PartitionMagic8!
Real-time means it monitors file changes and makes a backup accordingly. You tell it how many versions to keep, and whether you want dailys. If enable dailys, it keeps the latest per day for a month. That's overkill, but if you specify say 12 versions, those versions could be "used" in an hour (before you realize there is a problem).

Alternatively, simply run a scheduled backup at least once per day with Windows Backup or your fav backup program.

TW

[joh3004]

Thanks! Very informative...i will probably use windows backup...didn't even realize that i had it!