SageTV crashing bad on Live TV. Any help?

[cejota3]

Hello, I have Sage TV installed on a Win XP Pro PC (details below), and it crashes UGLY very frequently. The nature of these crashes are that that the SageTV.exe just dies, or even in some cases I get the BSD (blue screen of death, something I haven't seen regularlly since the days of Win98). Oddly enough, it only seems to happen when watching live tv, especially if you change channels. I have a Hauppauge PVR-150 in the machine, and I'm using its remote and blaster to control my DISH satellite receiver. I'm also using an nVidia video decoder (figured that would work best with the nForce FX5200 based video card I've got).

Watching a recorded program generally works okay. I had ver 4.1.3 and this was happening, so I submitted a support request. They told me to upgrade to the beta ver 4.1.10. I did that, and it only made things worse!

I really love SageTV, but this is getting beyond frustrating. We can't watch live tv! I'm very technically competent (I own my own software company), so I doubt there is anything very bone-headed going on here. This is all on a PC that has a "fresh install" of everything (including Windows), so there should not be any odd stuff interfering. In addition, I've doubled checked that I have the latest versions of ALL drivers.

My gut tells me this has got to be video related somehow, but I have really run out of obvious options.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. I'm going to bed for the night, but I'll check in in the morning. Thanks.

SOFTWARE: SageTV
VERSION: Version 4.1
TYPE OF USER: Licensed User
OS: WinXP Pro
CAPTURE DEVICE: Hauppauge PVR-150 (driver version 2.0.35.23258)
PROCESSOR: Intel P4 1.8
MEMORY: 1.0 GB
GRAPHICS CARD: Chaintech G-force (nvidia) FX5200 (driver 8.1.9.8) DVD MPEG2
ENCODER: nVidia PureVideo 4.02-185
ADDITIONAL HARDWARE: Creative SB Audigy (just the plain, original Audigy) (driver 5.12.8.1164)
SERVICE PROVIDER: Dish
BROADCAST CITY (LOCATION): Denver, Colorado
COUNTRY: USA
SERVICE: SageTV Service
SERVICE TYPE: Satellite

[stevech]

kinda smells like a memory error or bus problem
Is BIOS set correctly for the memory you have?

[cejota3]

Thanks for the post stevech. Ya, the BIOS is up to date, and I'm 99% sure things are set properly. The machine behaves just fine literally doing anything else (not that I'm doing much with it otherwise). For example, playing back MPG files and/or DVDs through Windows Media player works great.

For what it is worth, the crashes, especially the ugly ones, really seem to be happening when I'm changing channels. I'm using the remote and IR blaster that is part of the Hauppauge PVR-150, so I'm starting to suspect that board or the IR drivers for it are the problem.

I did get a quick reply from SageTV support (thanks guys if you're reading), and they indicated that because of the BSDs (blue screen of death) it is probably bad hardware or bad drivers. Because I've adjusted just about literally every other setting I can think of, I'm basically reaching the point where I think I've got to start swapping hardware (which we all know is a big pain in the butt!)

I was just hoping maybe someone else out there would be able to say, "That was happening to me, and I just did xyz to fix it". Ya, I know, I've probably got a better chance of winning the lottery!

[gplasky]

I would move the PVR150 to a different slot and get a newer set of drivers.
2.0.35.23348 WHQL Drivers

Gerry

[cejota3]

Just in case anyone reads this set of threads, I did finally get my setup fixed, but it wasn't easy! In short, I had two problems. First, the P4 motherboard I had turned out to be bad. I don't remember the model number, but it was a couple of years old "Spacewalker" brand (which is a fairly off-brand). Everything has been working flawlessly now with an AOpen DX 34 Plus (which is actually a Pentium 3 motherboard!)

I should note that when I say the motherboard was "bad", I cannot say for certain that it was truly defective or faulty because it had been used for years without a problem. Granted, in that mode it was just being used as a generic PC, and not media center PC. In short, it may have just been that for whatever reason, that motherboard was incompatible with my Hauppauge capture card and nVidia FX5200 video card combination.

Unfortunately, the motherboard swap didn't get me all the way there. It just eliminated my "hard" crashes and blue screens of death. The SageTV .EXE was still sometimes choking. That was resolved by reverting back a generation in the Hauppauge drivers and in SageTV (still SageTV 4.1, but just not the beta version).

Thanks everyone for your posts!