MVP flashes between black and Sage booting up screen

[Marty]

I been running two MVPs as wired using a Netgear powerline adapter, usually running between 30 and 50 Mbps. THis has worked fine for years. Recently I'm getting the flashing blue Sage booting up screen after they load the application, when I have to reboot them.

I have rebooted the server numerous times, deleted the Sage properties file and the Clients subdir and rebooted Sage on the server computer, as had been suggested in an old post I found.

I have to let the MVPs be unpowered for an hour or so ( or over night) between attempts to re-boot.

After that I was able to get one MVP working again but not the other, and it does the blue screen blinking. But at the same time, I can go into the other room with the other MVP and it works fine.

I feel sure it will go blinking if I have to reboot it, as that was how the problem first began to show up.

The search posts I found for this are several years old. Some suggest getting an updated mvp.bin file but the links are no longer good.

Also, some of the posts run on and on into several issues I don't have related to wireless.

This seems to be an old problem. Can anyone point me in the direction of a solution or more recent post that gives a solution? That would be much appreciated.

I running Sage ver 5.0.4.92 on the server, which I know is quite old but has worked fine for years. The MVPs are model 86017 Rev H3 (both).

THanks,
Marty

[davephan]

I have two MVPs that I haven't used much for several years. I occasionally had the MVP boot up problems. This happened about every other month. The solution was to leave it unplugged for many hours, then try again.

I suggest you take an image of your SageTV computer now, then recover the SageTV computer back to the image you took before the MVP problems began. If the MVP boot problems do not reoccur, then you know that the problem was with the SageTV computer, not the MVP units. You won't know what was causing the boot problems, but it doesn't matter because the problem would be fixed. If you haven't been using imaging, I suggest you start now.

If you haven't been using imaging and can't recover back your SageTV computer, then take an image now, then upgrade to the current version. If things don't work out, you can always recover your SageTV computer to the point in time before the SageTV upgrade.

I haven't used the MVPs much recently, but I haven't had any boot problems with the newer SageTV versions. It may be due to the problems were resolved with the newer SageTV versions, or I might not have used them enough to encounter the boot problems again.

Quite awhile ago, I fixed my occasional MVP problems by replacing them with HD-200 units. That fixed the MVP boot problems right away. The MVPs have been mostly collecting dust since then and are rarely used. The HD-200 units are much more reliable. The sound quality is very drastically better and the video quality is better too.

Dave

[Marty]

If you haven't been using imaging, I suggest you start now.

If you haven't been using imaging and can't recover back your SageTV computer, then take an image now, then upgrade to the current version. If things don't work out, you can always recover your SageTV computer to the point in time before the SageTV upgrade.

Dave,
Thanks! I'm not up on using imaging. How can I find out more and how to do it? Also, the recovery process?

I'll go ahead and see about the upgrade. I'm wondering whether I can just download it or will have to buy the latest.

Marty

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Marty

Dave,
Thanks! I'm not up on using imaging. How can I find out more and how to do it? Also, the recovery process?

I'll go ahead and see about the upgrade. I'm wondering whether I can just download it or will have to buy the latest.

Marty

There's several ways you can image. There is free software called PING Partition image is not Ghost and Clonezilla. There may be others too. I've tried PING and it does work to recover. I know people that used PING and it failed to recover. I have not tried Clonezilla yet.

I use Ghost and Acronis. Both are acceptable products. Years ago, both Ghost and Acronis had problems recovering, but I haven't heard of or experienced a failed recovery in years with either product. I use imaging at home and at work where we image and recover hundreds of servers. The servers have multiple recovery paths and imaging is frequently the best and quickest path.

If you want to buy Ghost or Acronis, search for a "discount code" on the web. When I do that there are web sites to buy through, which I do not use. I only use the coupon codes themselves that work on 'known good' web sites, like Newegg or some well known commercial company. You might be able to buy an older version used and upgrade for free or very cheap to reduce the price.

When you take images, save the image files on another hard drive. Never use optical media since sometimes the recoveries fail with optical media. You can take independent images or images which only capture the changes since the last full or partial image. I prefer to take full independent periodic images, since recoveries are reliable using full images. Depending on the imaging product, the images are created with the operating system running or not running. I only image my C drive, which I try to keep as small as possible in size.

The recoveries are done by booting to a CD or you might be able to boot to a USB flash drive. Then select the image to recover to, then start the recovery process. The whole recovery takes about 30 minutes, most of that time is unattended, while you can do something else. After the recovery completes then the system reboots and your computer is back to the point in time state when the image was taken. If there were problems related to the operating system or programs, those problems are resolved as long as the image was taken at a point in time when everything was working normally.

In the olden days of computing almost a couple decades ago now, it was a painful and slow process to fix problems. It could take hours, days, or weeks to solve complex problems. Sometimes, a scratch rebuild was needed when the problems could not be solved. Today, some people are still living in those olden days and still don't use imaging!

Dave