HD Extender locks up on occasion?

[pat_smith1969]

I just setup my HD extender this weekend.

I am getting lockups about 2 or 3 a day. It seems to be random when it does this. Sometimes it will do it while traversing menus, sometimes while simply watching SD TV, other times while watching HD TV.

About 1 out of 4 times a simple power button recycle will fix it, but most of the time a hard power cycle is required.

Needless to say the WAF is WAY donwn on this product so far.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by pat_smith1969

I just setup my HD extender this weekend.

I am getting lockups about 2 or 3 a day. It seems to be random when it does this. Sometimes it will do it while traversing menus, sometimes while simply watching SD TV, other times while watching HD TV.

About 1 out of 4 times a simple power button recycle will fix it, but most of the time a hard power cycle is required.

Needless to say the WAF is WAY donwn on this product so far.

Are you running 6.3.10? Some folks seem to be having problems with this, but not with 6.3.8 or 6.3.9...

[electronics4lif]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Are you running 6.3.10? Some folks seem to be having problems with this, but not with 6.3.8 or 6.3.9...

I have had lock ups with 6.3.9 and 6.3.10.

[Opus4]

What version of Java is being used on the server? This may or may not be an issue, but try using Java v1.6 update 4 or 5 on the SageTV server. As I posted elsewhere earlier today: I'm told there were some important Java bug fixes in update 4. If Java isn't already on a Windows system, the SageTV installer will install Java v1.6.0_04. (This was updated in SageTV v6.3.7)

- Andy

[electronics4lif]

Originally Posted by Opus4

What version of Java is being used on the server? This may or may not be an issue, but try using Java v1.6 update 4 or 5 on the SageTV server. As I posted elsewhere earlier today: I'm told there were some important Java bug fixes in update 4. If Java isn't already on a Windows system, the SageTV installer will install Java v1.6.0_04. (This was updated in SageTV v6.3.7)

- Andy

I am running Java 1.6 update 5 on the server. All older versions of Java have been removed.

[Stuntman]

Just had my first lockup since receiving the 'second shipment' version of the extender. I'd seen this on my 'first shipment' extender, but had not seen it on one of the new ones until now. Link light and power light freeze, the image freezes and the unit becomes unresponsive to the remote.. physically turning the unit off and on restores functionality.

I'm running Java 6 update 4, will look for a new update..

[nebulink]

My extenders lock up periodicaly as well. Not all of them at the same time. Maybe once a day or every other day. Hard to tell. I can turn the unit off with the remote and then back on with the remote and I am back to the main menu and all is well.

Has anyone heard from Sage about this issue? I submitted a ticket and have not heard anything yet.

[carlgar]

I have been testing an older version of the firmware for support. It looks good to me. I will give support the results on Monday or the next lockup. In over a week of running, I have only seen one lockup. I have seen no sign of the "Vista TCP stack issue" which was my primary issue.

[nebulink]

hopefully they squash this bug soon.

[btrcp2000]

Got one good solid week with my extender, now freezing constantly after a few minutes. MVPs still work fine and server seems normal, although it has given a few strange error messages ("the pipe has ended"??) and sagetvservice randomly switches from my user account to localuser from time to time.

Haven't done a thing to the server itself. I did add a vista pc to the network, but it is not in the same workgroup, placeshifter not installed, nothing to do directly with sage. It is upgrading to vista sp1 right now. Can just having vista somewhere on the network cause issues with sage?

I do have a couple cheap gigafast 10/100 switches that will be replaced with gigabit switches when the ups man shows up. Maybe that will help.

In any case, waf at an all time low, may not recover this time. We may be keeping our cable dvr for a long time to come.

[carlgar]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

It is upgrading to vista sp1 right now. Can just having vista somewhere on the network cause issues with sage?

I think a pre sp1 Vista can cause network issues. If problem still occur after sp1 update, then take the system offline to see if issue goes away. The SP1 Vista is very solid, I no longer see any network issues related to Vista.

[gplasky]

If you're Sagetv service account randomly changes from the user account to local service you have bigger issues. Make sure the user has a password and is in the Administrator group.

Gerry

[btrcp2000]

For now I'm ready to blame hd100 firmware for my issues. I swapped out my first one (fw 02042008) with my new one (fw 12262007) and it worked great for the rest of the evening. The text on the menus also seemed crisper, more like my pc client.

I had a lot of craziness in general last night, beyond sage. We have a kitchen pc that had picked up a trojan, which avg kept catching and quarantining. Internet explorer would return to the home page a few seconds after surfing somewhere. I had been meaning to replace it anyway with another one, so I built a fresh vista install on an entirely separate pc that had been mothballed. Very strangely, IE on vista did the same thing for a while. It seemed to calm down overnight somehow, but it was just amazing to me that the same symptom could occur on a brand new pc, and led me to believe I have network issues, which I still suspect and will be keeping an eye on.

btw, i only have one user account on each pc, same id and password, all admins.

[Brent]

I've been following this thread with interest mostly because my experience with the HD100 has been very good. No lockups, smooth video etc. I'm using the latest firmware, the latest SageTV version and SageMC on a Gigabit ethernet network.

I only post this to let you know there is hope. Not sure what advice to give other than to hang in there...

[carlgar]

Brent, what version of the firmware are you running? Do you power off or just go standby overnight.

I have been testing the 12242007 version of the firmware for almost 2 weeks. It does seem more solid to me. It does eliminate the "Vista TCP stack error" that I had been seeing. However, I still have not been able to run more that 7 days without seeing a lockup of some type. With this version of the firmware I have encountered 2 lockups, both occurred when I fell asleep and the screen saver kicked in. I tried the prove that it was related to the screen saver but could not. I even left it on overnight and the screen saver kicked in but it still worked properly. I now think it may have something to do with how long you go go without powering off the extender. My extender has now been up for almost 12 days with the last hang seen about 3 1/2 days ago. I only power it off when I have to.

[gplasky]

So far all the lockups I have seen on mine occurred while I was actually watching something. One occurred watching a HD TV recording. Just the other day it locked while watching a DVD from the hard drive. There seems to be about a week between these lockups for me. I watch maybe 2-3 hours of TV during the week per evening. More on the weekends and holidays. I haven't been able to do the debugging because I really don't want a week or more of debugging logs on the server. Maybe I'll be able to do something over the upcoming holiday weekend. Running 20080307 (the latest) and 6.3.10. And keep in mind I've only seen about 4 or 5 over about a month and a half.

Gerry

[Brent]

Originally Posted by carlgar

Brent, what version of the firmware are you running?

I think (not positive) it's 02042008, but I'll check tonight to be sure.

Do you power off or just go standby overnight.

I never power off - always standby.

Other things I think might be relevant:

• I use XP across my network including the SageTV server (no Vista)
• I use SageTV in service mode (I'm assuming everyone does when they use extenders?)
• I do not use screensavers on my extender because I think screensavers sometimes DO cause issues.
• I've only powered my extender off one time since it was installed so it doesn't make since that this would be an issue - for me at least.

[briands]

Had my first lock up this evening. No remote button response. No front panel button response. Had to flip the switch off in the back... I was hoping these kind of problems were a thing of the past... I'll be traveling extensively over the next month and these kind of things kill the WAF.

Lock up details...
During playback of SD recording.
Server running service mode
server running XP SP2 with all of the updates
Java 6 update 5
le me know if there are any other questions.

[unkyjoe]

Briands,

Same setup here same problems.

I guess I will have to get an event log together for Sage - yet again

You would think this kind of thing would show up in beta testing, I used the RC before this release and it was smooth as silk.

Weird, but again in deference to Sage, there are a lot of variables that could be affecting causing this so no slam to sage

[briands]

I scanned the log file... but could not find anything specific about when the extender dropped out... of course, I don't really know what to look for.

My suspicion is that this is a problem with the extender and I don't believe it has any logging functionality other than the server log.