Help, Continual Freeze's / Reboots

[Juncti]

I've been trying every tip I can find on this site to get my system working, but so far nothing has made any difference.

Here is my setup

Dual AMD 1600's
Tyan S2460
1.5 Gig 2100ram
AGP 256 Radeon Xtasy
Creative AudioPCI
2 X 500MCE
Diamond 56k modem
80 gig 7200 Seagate Main
300 gig 7200 Seagate Video

Here is what is happening, anytime anything is recording in LiveTV or just recording in general. I'll typically have a hard freeze (nothing works power needs to be turned off to reboot) or I get a hard reboot. Usually this happens anywhere from 5 minutes to 25 minutes into use whether I'm recording 1 or 4 programs. Here is what I've tried so far.

Updated all drivers, updated bios, tried different encoders (cyberlink and elecard), tried a clean install of XPMCE and now on a clean install of XP Pro. I've tried moving the cards around, still nothing. I've run Sage as a service and let it run in the background, same results. I've tried Sage 2.1 originally, then tried 2.0 but the cards wouldn't appear in 2.0, now I'm on the 222 beta and still the exact same problem.

To test the cards I opened 4 instances of the AMCap that came with the capture cards and was able to tune 4 different channels and have all 4 up at the same time. That ran for a few hours without fail. I loaded Sage and pulled up one channel in LiveTV and crashed in less than 5 minutes.

I've also let Sage run without recording and the system doesn't crash. It seems to only crash when sage is recording something.

Does anyone have any ideas on this? It's so frustrating because the picture quality for while it's working looks good and the menus and everything are really sharp and nice, I just can't get it to run more than 30 minutes.

Thanks

[Opus4]

These comments are just guesses too... Is java up to date? I'm guessing it is, since these are new Windows installations. I keep wondering if there are any problems with the latest 06 version.

Does it work with just a single tuner installed?

Does it crash if you only record w/o watching anything? You mentioned Cyberlink & Elecard -- those are actually decoders for playback, so I was wondering what happens when you don't use playback.

The beta has logging turned on, so Frey might be able to see something from that.

That's about all I can think of, so maybe others will chime it.

(My office PC actually has that same motherboard... but it has a pvr-usb2 connected just for testing instead of any internal tuners.)

- Andy

[Juncti]

Thanks for the response. The java is whatever version is currently found on the site. I just purchased and downloaded everything last week. I tried my best to solve this by looking through the site before posting so as not to duplicate a question.

Here is a little more since I posted. I set 4 30 minute programs to record at the same time then rebooted and did not start Sage, I just let the service handle it to see if it was the display program causing my hangs. They made it 22 minutes and then hard froze the system prompting a reboot.

Since then I left the record schedule blank and it has continued to run for 2 hours without a freeze. So I then scheduled 4 30 minute programs back to back on the same channel so as to only use one tuner. All 4 recorded without problem on a single tuner and the system did not crash. The other 3 tuners were there, but not needed as no overlapping records were set. So now the system has run roughly 4 hours without fail. I'm about to try setting up 2 recordings at the same time to see what happens.

Also, last night I tried disabling the 2nd tuner on both cards because I read a number of motherboards have trouble with the dual tuners (VIA chipsets mainly), it still crashed even with only tuner 1 from both cards recording.

It also seems to crash faster in livetv mode than recording mode. Usually livetv lasts around 5 minutes and recording while just being at the menu or running as a service goes roughly 25 minutes. Definately seems that recording is the problem.

As for beta having reporting, how do I find the reports? Maybe I can see something in there and help narrow down the problem.

Next thing I'm trying is downloading the Beyondtv demo and seeing if it crashes in there (I didn't think to test the MCE tv player while I had that running and doubt I'll reinstall it).

Thanks again for the help, Sage looks great, now if only I could get it working. lol

As a bonus though, the PQ of what recordings I do get is quite nice. lol

[Opus4]

Try disabling one of the cpus? Physically remove 1 card & try 2 tuners? IDE issue, since you can record 1 stream ok?

I actually reverted to the previous bios version for my s2460 mb, since installing the latest one quite a while back caused CD burning to blow up.

The logs are in the SageTV dir -- sagetv_#.txt, where 0 is the most recent & 4 is the oldest.

I'm not sure what else to say; with the 500s being new, it is hard for me to guess what is causing the problem. I would wonder if 2 other tuners work, but it doesn't sound like that test is an option at the moment...

- Andy

[Juncti]

Well, 2 shows just finished recording at the same time and it's still running. I noticed that it was using tuner 2 and tuner 3, so maybe that was one tuner from each card and the conflict happens when multiple tuners on a single card fire up. I'm testing that next by recording 3 shows.

If that crashes I'll remove a 500 and see what happens. After that I'll try disabling a cpu. Any idea how to turn off a cpu or do I have to physically remove it?

You also mention IDE issue. Do you mean that the hard drive isn't keeping up and hence crashing? Maybe I'm not getting enough speed out of the drive. If all else fails that I'm planning to try I'll have to investigate that route.

Thanks again, now off to try 3 shows.

[Opus4]

I thought there was a bios option to disable a cpu, but it has been a while since I looked at that, so I could easily be wrong.

For IDE, I guess I was thinking some sort of disk error, but the more I think about it, that wouldn't explain why a single tuner worked, unless it was just luck.

- Andy

[Juncti]

Well an update to the problem.

The bios does not offer an option to turn off a processor, so I'll have to literally yank one out if I need to go that far.

Beyondtv was a joke, wouldn't even install without a good internet connection. Wanted to download like 10 large apps before installing.

3 shows at once caused another freeze, so then I yanked a 500 out and recorded 2 at once on the 1 card. It almost immediately froze. I definately think it's something with recording on the 2nd tuner of the cards and the records that are working must be on tuner 1's.

I downloaded the motherboard monitor tool for this board and found something interesting in my IRQ's. Both tuner 1's have their own IRQ, but the tuner 2's share an IRQ with another device. One uses the modem IRQ and the other uses the graphics card IRQ. So could this be an IRQ conflict? If so any ideas how to resolve that? I have 1 agp slot and 6 pci slots, still have 2 pci slots open so it seems weird I'm getting this conflict.

Anyway, I'm too tired to go on tonight, I'll try some more in the morning if anyone has any ideas.

Thanks.

[Cayars]

You should be able to turn off the modem in the bios assuming it's built in and you're not using it. You also DO NOT want to share an IRQ with the Video Card. That will can cause you lots of problems.

Many motherboards will allow you to control IRQ settings from the BIOS so you may want to check that out. If this doesn't do it for you then try moving the offending board to another slot preferrably as far physically as possible from the video card.

[Juncti]

Well I've tried all I can think of. I couldn't get the IRQ's free so I finally had to remove my audio card and modem to allow the tuners and video card to all have their own IRQ. I then opened up Sage and started recording with no IRQ conflicts, within 20 minutes another hard freeze.

How do you determine what chipset your motherboard is using? Maybe I am on a VIA and this is my problem. The crashes only occur if I'm recording, never when I'm not. This is so annoying.

Thanks again for the help, if I do wind up needing to replace this motherboard, what motherboard would anyone recommend that would hopefully not have this conflict with the 500's?

[Opus4]

I don't know what else to suggest, but just so you know, here is the site for that Tyan s2460. It uses AMD's chipset. As far as I know, there is nothing on it from VIA; I would never have knowingly purchased it a few years ago otherwise.

- Andy

[Juncti]

Well I dug out an old system I don't use much anymore to see what would happen on there. Did a clean xp install. System is a Athlon 1400, 786ram, ATI 7200, 40gig 7200 Maxtor. Motherboard is a Shuttle AK31V20 which unfortunately is a VIA board.

I'm getting the exact same problem on here, with the exception that on this machine I get a hard reboot rather than a screen freeze. I turned off automatic restarts hoping I'd get a error message but nope.

Also, as on the other machine, live tv crashes almost immediately while recording in the background lasts around 25 minutes.

I can still pull up all 4 tuners on different channels in AMCap without problem and that will run fine. Sage will also run fine until a record happens. Seems odd that this is happening on 2 machines. It's gotta either be the drivers or the way Sage is using them that's causing the crash because there is no crash until a recording happens. I can even play back the recordings without problem. Only crashes on a record.

Also, the 2 500 cards were bought from different vendors, so I doubt both are broken.

Any more ideas? I've emailed Sage but haven't heard back yet.

[RedR]

Heya,

Seems I am having the same problem with a PVR-500. Any resolve to this?

[stanger89]

Have you tried pulling a CPU yet? Do you have anything non-Dual-CPU non-VIA you can try it in? I know the original PVR-PCI (before the 250) specifically stated that multi-CPU configurations were not supported.

[RedR]

I am running a single CPU setup here. Perhaps someone could point the way to drivers for the PVR-500 that are known to work with X version of Sage? I cant help but think that is the problem.

[Boolah]

I contacted Hauppauge last year regarding this issue. Apparently, there is a problem with the 150/500 drivers and specific VIA chipsets (although, Hauppauge is still trying to figure out exactly which chipsets are effected). From what I've seen, it seems to be older VIA chipsets, but have no real proof of this.

I have a Soyo P4MVGA motherboard (P4M266A NB and VT8235 SB) and the board runs fine with 3 250MCEs. But when I drop a 150MCE in there, the machine freezes every 5 minutes (when using the 150MCE). Removing the 250s and all other components makes no difference. Different PCI slots for the 150 make no difference either. I can, however, drop the same 150MCE in my Abit IS7-G (i865PE chipset) and have zero problems with the card.

Since the problem only appear (from what I've seen on various boards) in older VIA chipsets, I don't think Hauppauge is very motivated in fixing the issue. I contacted them about it in November of last year and they were already aware of the problem back then, but there's still no fix. I just bought another motherboard (FoxConn 865A01-G-6EKRS) and the three 250MCEs and 150MCE are all doing just fine.

[RedR]

Thanks Boolah, Spose I am willing to get a new MB to test this out. I really hate to dump money to solve a problem but I would like to have a nForce board in my PVR

Thanks everyone,
RedR

[pjaffray]

I have been searching and reading for hours trying to figure this out. This thread, although old, seemed the most relevant. I am having the problem with the system rebooting either while watching LiveTV or when recording. As a result I am missing most recordings There is nothing in any of the system event logs other than the system restarting. There doen't appear to be any SageTV log file to refer to. I have verified a couple times that Sage is recording but when I check back later I find the system rebooted near the end of the show and there is no recording.

My config:

ASUS A8V Deluxe - BIOS 1014.008 (6/30/05)
Note: this BIOS level specifically says it fixes the PVR500 problem
AMD Athlon 64 3200, Venice core 2.0GHz
1GB memory DDR400 (2x512 corsair)
Hauppauge PVR 500MCE (bundled with Sage from PCAlchemy)
driver version: 2.0.30.23074 (latest I could find)
Windows XP Pro SP2 current with all MS updates
FX5200 based video card
SaveTV 2.2.8

The machine had been rock stable until I added the 500 and Sage. I have gone through everything to make sure I have current drivers and BIOS.

I didn't find any more recent threads so I am wondering if anyone has solved this problem without moving to a non-VIA based motherboard.

Help Please.

[SYL]

Hi everyone,

I recently installed a 500 on my system and it too is exhibiting the same reboot problem. I am running on a one year old Mainboard motherboard with a P4 and 512 MB memory. I use this machine as my entertainment unit so nothing else is running on it. Is it possible that there is a conflict with Sage and the PVR500? I'm still running SageTV 2.1. The first time this happened, I went into Sage and turned off all the energy saving options. The second time this happended, I moved the Sage recording directly to a master drive (the slave is a dvd writer and I don't use it when Sage is recording). I ignored the subsequent few times but looks like I need to address it again since the season is beginning. I plan to take the second tuner of the 500 card offline and see. I would appreciate it if anyone having tried this already with no luck let me know. Thanks

[stanger89]

All I can say is I've had no issues whatsoever with my 500, but I've got an nForce board.

[michelkenny]

I have 2 PVR-500's working fine (can record 4 shows at once) on an Intel D865PERL motherboard.