Sage TV 4.1 Set Back to Default

[corduroy]

Hello Everybody,

I'm relativley new at this thing and have had my system running for about 3 weeks now. Every problem I've run into has had a solution on these boards. Thanks to this wonderul community for that.

Now, I'm having a bigger problem, and if I don't get it working, my wife and daughter will kill me. Since day 1, I've had the problem that others here have posted about where Sage TV will quit over night, or minimize itself in windowed mode (while it had previously been running in full screen mode). I basically have assumed that every morning I have to reboot the machine and everything works again. (Not a good solution, but I can live with it). I also have the problem that others are experiencing when you switch from windowed to fullscreen or back again, the program locks up and you just get a black screen. This morning, the same thing happened, so I rebooted like normal, Sage TV started up in full screen, and it had totally reset itself. I had to reset up everything.. what country I'm in, my satellite provider, the video capture, EVERYTHING!!!! I had spent a lot of time getting things to what I considered pretty good. I can live with doing it all again, but why did this happen? What's to stop it from happening in another 3 weeks? I'll give you guys the details of my setup below, and maybe you can give me some ideas... Any help would be much appreciated... Thanks again...

Chris

AMD 1800 (runs at 1.5ghz)
1 GB RAM
Windows XP Home (SP2, all updates done, including latest Java)
PVR 150 (with IR Blaster and 45 button remote, running through Svideo)
Sage TV 4.1 (latest version, no beta)
Nvidia GeForce FX 5700LE (128 MB MB, running through Svideo)

[ben_95sl1]

is this just the client that closes by itself....are you using the server machine with the sage service enabled? or is it the full standalone running (service disabled on server system)? Is your system set to go standby or use a screensaver/blank screen/tun off monitor in winxp (perhaps related?)? I disabled standby(and basically all powersaving stuff) on my system as it basically records 24/7 anyway with intelligent recording enabled.

do you have 3d accel enabled, FSE enabled, are you using overlay or vmr9, overlay color keying, what decoder codec are you using, does the resize crash happen when playing video, etc???

if sagetv completely lost its properties and or wiz.bin file that sounds really bad...I've had it crash a few times, and yet to have any issues like that. please backup your properties and wiz.bin files with all of sagetv shutdown; as discussed numerous times in the forum; its a lifesaver.

[corduroy]

Originally Posted by ben_95sl1

is this just the client that closes by itself....are you using the server machine with the sage service enabled? or is it the full standalone running (service disabled on server system)? Is your system set to go standby or use a screensaver/blank screen/tun off monitor in winxp (perhaps related?)? I disabled standby(and basically all powersaving stuff) on my system as it basically records 24/7 anyway with intelligent recording enabled.

do you have 3d accel enabled, FSE enabled, are you using overlay or vmr9, overlay color keying, what decoder codec are you using, does the resize crash happen when playing video, etc???

if sagetv completely lost its properties and or wiz.bin file that sounds really bad...I've had it crash a few times, and yet to have any issues like that. please backup your properties and wiz.bin files with all of sagetv shutdown; as discussed numerous times in the forum; its a lifesaver.

Thanks for the reply ben... It is Sage Tv standalone version. I do not have any server stuff running and it is only running on one machine. I do have 3d acceleration enabled (I think?) and am using the Nvidia decoder codec (what a beautiful looking codec). The resize crash will usually happen when I'm at the main menu, but will always happen when playing video. I'm not positive what FSE means, but from what I understand is means that it is set to run in fullscreen at bootup. If this is actually what FSE stand for, then yes, I am running it. I don't have intelligent recording active, and I have turned off all energy saving features in windows. I have also made sure that none of the spyware/antivirus stuff is set to do automatic scans and require manual operation. I was not aware of the wiz.bin file thing, but as soon as I get everything set up properly again, I will make a backup. So, if this happens again, I can just replace the win.bin file with my old one and be back in bussines? Thanks again for all your help.

Chris

[Opus4]

FSE is FullScreen Exclusive mode, and is an option to try if you have 3D Acceleration enabled in Detailed Setup -> Advanced.

When the config files get corrupted like that, it usually means the PC crashed while the files were open. SageTV keeps its own autobackups of wiz.bin & the properties files, but you can run into issues where they aren't correct either... but that should be very rare. Still, backups of wiz.bin & the properties files are a good idea.

SageTV shouldn't be crashing like that, though. I would consider doing a reinstall, after uninstalling the old version & deleting the old SageTV dir before reinstalling. You could also try a newer or older version of java (depending on which you are using) and making sure that DirectX and your video drivers are up to date. Turning off 3D Acceleration is something to try if ther are DirectX problems.

You can set the debug_logging=TRUE property (exactly like that, including CAPS), to see what kind of debug log gets generated. Tech support might be able to see some problem i that file.

- Andy

[ben_95sl1]

Originally Posted by corduroy

Thanks for the reply ben... It is Sage Tv standalone version. I do not have any server stuff running and it is only running on one machine. I do have 3d acceleration enabled (I think?) and am using the Nvidia decoder codec (what a beautiful looking codec). The resize crash will usually happen when I'm at the main menu, but will always happen when playing video. I'm not positive what FSE means, but from what I understand is means that it is set to run in fullscreen at bootup. If this is actually what FSE stand for, then yes, I am running it. I don't have intelligent recording active, and I have turned off all energy saving features in windows. I have also made sure that none of the spyware/antivirus stuff is set to do automatic scans and require manual operation. I was not aware of the wiz.bin file thing, but as soon as I get everything set up properly again, I will make a backup. So, if this happens again, I can just replace the win.bin file with my old one and be back in bussines? Thanks again for all your help.

Chris

Sounds like you're already doing a good job with the system setup. I'd definitely turn off 3d accel to see what happens. I wonder if it could be related to downloading guide data in the middle of the night???? <---just thinking out loud.

backing up wiz.bin and sage.properties is like the most important thing; those two files are all you should need if, for example, you lost a hard drive and had to start from scratch....putting in those files will mean you're right back where you were at backup time (setup, watched shows, etc, etc). Blah blah, opus4 covers all this in the FAQ. He's smart cookie

The resetting problem COULD be completely unrelated to sagetv; what happened sounds very suspicious. Who knows; I have enough problems diagnosing stuff on my own system!!!