Help! Is Sage freezing for anyone else?

[popechild]

I know there were alot of people complaining about Sage randomly freezing awhile back, but it seems like alot of that may have been cleared up for some people with one of the newer Betas. I'm wondering if anyone else is still having Sage completely freeze on them on a regular basis?

Ever since *roughly* the time that I upgraded to v6 (can't remember if it exactly coincides), I've had Sage regularly freeze up during playback. When I say regularly I mean at least once a day - sometimes every other day if I'm lucky. Occasionally I can ctrl-alt-del to shut Sage down, other times I have to hard reboot the system. Needless to say the WAF is at an all-time low and just wants to use the dang cable box.

I had been running fairly smoothly for about a year before this started happening. I'm now on 6.2.5 and it's still going on.

The kicker is I just did a complete reformat and re-install of my entire system from the ground up, with only the bare essentials for software, assuming that I had gotten it all junked up somewhere along the way. After hours and hours of work to re-install everything, I still have the exact same problem.


I'll gladly post any specs or details that people think will be helpful, but at this point I'm just trying to find out if this is a widespread problem or if it's just unlucky me. Obviously, any suggestions would be appreciated as well!

(Also should mention that I've been submitting log files to Sage support for awhile as well, and nothing beneficial has come out of it yet unfortunately.)

[popechild]

FYI: System Specs

Mobo: MSI K8NGM2-FID
CPU: AMD 3500+ Venice
Video: Gigabyte GV-NX85T256H GeForce 8500GT
Capture: Hauppauge 1600 Dual Tuner, Avermedia a180
1GB RAM
XP MCE

Sage 6.2.5
Java 6 Update 2

nVidia Purevideo or Cyberlink decoders

[Fluffdaddy]

Hows your systems ventilation? Heat can be a bitch,

Also give your power supply the hairy eyeball too,

good luck

[popechild]

I think heat is fine. Would overheating affect sage but not the rest of the system? I'm starting to wonder about my nvidia drivers...

[Apap]

One of the first things I suspect (after software) is ram. That can cause the occasional lockup. You might try Memtest or some other memory testing utility to at least rule out that possibility.

[dcardellini]

I have four clients and a server. All of my clients are seeing "the freezing", usually when first starting to watch a live show, but sometimes when toggling from full screen to window, and sometimes when I have intentionally shut server down. This is happening on 6.2.4, 6.2.5, 6.2.6...I get the rotating icon that doesn't end, on a black screen; cannot even ctr-alt-del to kill Sage...must reboot.

Have little history prior to these betas. Mix of machines, Intel and AMD cpu's, Intel, Via and nVidia motherboards, 6600gt agp's, 6150 on-board, gm915. All with freshly loaded and updated OS's XP SP2 and MCE2005. Server has Fusion 5's and Firewire to Moto 6412.

[coppit]

I see freezing as well. The first kind is my system freezing for 5-10 seconds, then it resumes without a problem. The second kind is that Sage stops responding to my remote (Harmony). For this one I can get up, get the keyboard, mouse click on the Sage UI, and all is fixed. The third kind is the "hard" freeze where I have to kill the Sage process in task manager and restart.

I'm not sure what causes any of these. I suspect the second one is a goofy IR driver.

[popechild]

Originally Posted by Apap

One of the first things I suspect (after software) is ram. That can cause the occasional lockup. You might try Memtest or some other memory testing utility to at least rule out that possibility.

I ran memtest when I re-formatted the system and it passed with flying colors.

I changed video drivers, but still ended up getting a freeze, so I'm back to square one I guess...

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by dcardellini

I have four clients and a server. All of my clients are seeing "the freezing", usually when first starting to watch a live show, but sometimes when toggling from full screen to window, and sometimes when I have intentionally shut server down. This is happening on 6.2.4, 6.2.5, 6.2.6...I get the rotating icon that doesn't end, on a black screen; cannot even ctr-alt-del to kill Sage...must reboot.

Have little history prior to these betas. Mix of machines, Intel and AMD cpu's, Intel, Via and nVidia motherboards, 6600gt agp's, 6150 on-board, gm915. All with freshly loaded and updated OS's XP SP2 and MCE2005. Server has Fusion 5's and Firewire to Moto 6412.

Are you running the latest Java JRE? And is the network between you and the server "questionable"? My experience is that sage doesn't tolerate flaky networks all that well.

thanks,
Mike

[dcardellini]

Have the latest Java 1.6 update 2 on all machines.

I'll double-check network.....two gigabit switches for home network. Biggest problem is between server and client on same switch. If there were network problems, suspect that I would see awful things on playback. Again, most problems involve starting to view a show, or, as I just discovered, when I go from windowed to full screen (I get black screen, no rotating icon, and freeze up).

[dcardellini]

p.s. coppit:

I also have a Harmony Remote 680 using a Hauppage winPVR MCE receiver.

[GTwannabe]

Try running a disk diagnostic on your hard drive. Preferably something that shows you the error rate (GRC SpinRite is a good one).

I've seen a disturbing trend of hard drives going bad at work. Traditionally, when a hard drive has too many sectors go bad or too high an error/retry rate, it will throw a SMART error code. The newer (made in China) drives won't throw a SMART code no matter how high the error rate climbs. While the drive can eventually access the data, Windows will time out waiting for the file to be read and all kinds of weirdness can result.