Updated to Geforce 6200, now Sage crashes

dflachbart · #1 06-06-2006, 11:05 AM

I upgraded my system to a eVGA Geforce 6200 128MB AGP (from a MX4000), and now I am getting constant crashes of Sage and the whole system. It always happens during watching live tv, after changing channels a bunch of times (sometimes it takes quite a while to reproduce it ...). The crashes are of various kind, sometimes I get the 'Lost connection to the server' screen indicating that the service died, sometimes Sage just exits to the Windows desktop, and other times I even get blue screens, again with different error messages, like error in nv4_disp.dll, memory failures, or error in ntfs.dll ...

I did a clean install of the drivers (uninstalled old drivers and PureVideo decoder first), and tried the drivers I was using so far (81.91), the most recent official ones (84.21), and the new Series 90 drivers, but nothing helped. Using the Sage decoder didnt make a difference either. I am not a BIOS expert, but I also tried disabling some of the AGP feature in the BIOS (fast write, direct write, etc), again without success.

Edit: forgot, I also removed the Java 1.5 runtime and reinstalled 1.4, didnt help ...

So do I just have to accept that this card is somehow not compatible with my motherboard (Mach Speed P4M800 Via with 2.93 Celeron) and my two PVR-150's, or does anyone has any suggestions what else to try ? I really would like to keep this card in there (the Winamp visualizations run so much smoother and the enlarged OSD problem I had with the MX4000 was gone too), but right now I don't know what else to do other than putting the old card back in ...

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks,
Dirk

millers_35 · #2 06-06-2006, 11:09 AM

Did you try uninstalling the drivers from the control panel then reboot into safe mode and run Driver Cleaner. There still may be something from the old card settings that are causing this. Worth a shot if you havent already done this.

Miller

dflachbart · #3 06-06-2006, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by millers_35

Did you try uninstalling the drivers from the control panel then reboot into safe mode and run Driver Cleaner. There still may be something from the old card settings that are causing this. Worth a shot if you havent already done this.

Miller

I tried 'Nasty File Remover', but I will give Driver Cleaner a shot. So I take it that it also removes old registry settings ? The other tool only deleted files ...

Thanks for the tip,

Dirk

GKusnick · #4 06-06-2006, 11:23 AM

Just to cover all the bases, are you sure the new card is being adequately powered? Newer video cards have an additional four-pin power connector that your old card did not have.

Also make sure your Via GART drivers and such are up to date.

ke6guj · #5 06-06-2006, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Just to cover all the bases, are you sure the new card is being adequately powered? Newer video cards have an additional four-pin power connector that your old card did not have.

To expand on this, make sure that your power supply is up to the task. My system was stable until I popped in a new 6800 card and another HD to my RAID array. I would then get sage lockups and crashes if I was watching videos off my RAID, but not if watching off a single drive or network share. Also, I could record 5 incoming shows to the RAID with no issues, just watch them off the RAID.

It ended up being that trying to spin up the RAID along with powering the card under video usage was enough to cause the RAID to suffer problems since the power supply couldn't keep up.

Inadequate power supplies can manifest all kinds of weird problems.

dflachbart · #6 06-06-2006, 12:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Just to cover all the bases, are you sure the new card is being adequately powered? Newer video cards have an additional four-pin power connector that your old card did not have.

Now that would have been too sweet to be true, but I took the card out and double-checked, it doesn't have a separate power connector ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Also make sure your Via GART drivers and such are up to date.

Thanks for the tip, I just downloaded and installed the latest VIA4in1. The strange thing is that it doesnt even list anything related to AGP to install (only Machine Inf and PATA/SATA drivers), and I remember that it didn't do that either when I first set up the system ...

Dirk

dflachbart · #7 06-06-2006, 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ke6guj

To expand on this, make sure that your power supply is up to the task. My system was stable until I popped in a new 6800 card and another HD to my RAID array. I would then get sage lockups and crashes if I was watching videos off my RAID, but not if watching off a single drive or network share. Also, I could record 5 incoming shows to the RAID with no issues, just watch them off the RAID.

I have a 400W power supply for 2 PATA HDs, graphics card, sound card, and 2 PVR-150's, I would assume that this should be enough ... ?

Also, the card runs just fine outside of Sage (I left the Winamp Milkdrop visualization run for a few hours). If it was a power issue, it should show up in this case too, right ?

Thanks,
Dirk

ke6guj · #8 06-06-2006, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by flachbar

I have a 400W power supply for 2 PATA HDs, graphics card, sound card, and 2 PVR-150's, I would assume that this should be enough ... ?

Also, the card runs just fine outside of Sage (I left the Winamp Milkdrop visualization run for a few hours). If it was a power issue, it should show up in this case too, right ?

Thanks,
Dirk

I would assume that 400w would be enough. However, not all power supplies are created equally. it

My system had 6HD's, 5 of them on a RAID card, 2 pvr-500's, 1 pvr-150, and a 5200 on a 450w and ran fine. After I did a CPU/motherboard upgrade and swapped in a 6800, I started having problems. That is when I learned that "450w" was not the important number, but the number of amps on the +5v and +12v rails. I popped in a good 500w supply and have been trouble free so far. http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16736

You mention that it errors during live TV, how about when you are watching pre-recorded shows? The reason I ask is that if it is only during live tv (or watching one recorded show while the pvr-card is currently recording something else) is that that is the time that your system is using maximum power; pvr-card recording, HD spinning, and video card rendering, and that is when any power issues could pop up.

millers_35 · #9 06-06-2006, 01:04 PM

If you want to test how the card does under stress you could try something like this http://www.daionet.gr.jp/~masa/rthdribl/#Download I use this stress test my card to see how hot it gets under full load.

Miller

edit. What PSU do you have?

paulbeers · #10 06-06-2006, 01:49 PM

Did you reinstall Sage?

GKusnick · #11 06-06-2006, 01:54 PM

Another thing you might try is juggling cards around in PCI slots to minimize interrupt sharing. (There's usually a BIOS screen that tells you which IRQs go with which slots.) Via chipsets don't seem to be too good at sharing interrupts between tuner cards and AGP cards. It's possible the new AGP card has exposed a lurking problem here.

When I first started using Sage a year and a half ago I had terrible trouble with intermittent lockups and crashes until I rearranged my PCI cards to find a combo my mobo could tolerate.

dflachbart · #12 06-06-2006, 02:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by paulbeers

Did you reinstall Sage?

No, I didn't ...
Do you think it would make a difference ?

dflachbart · #13 06-06-2006, 02:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Another thing you might try is juggling cards around in PCI slots to minimize interrupt sharing. (There's usually a BIOS screen that tells you which IRQs go with which slots.) Via chipsets don't seem to be too good at sharing interrupts between tuner cards and AGP cards. It's possible the new AGP card has exposed a lurking problem here.

When I first started using Sage a year and a half ago I had terrible trouble with intermittent lockups and crashes until I rearranged my PCI cards to find a combo my mobo could tolerate.

Yeah, that's probably the next (and maybe the last) thing I will try ...

Thanks,
Dirk

dflachbart · #14 06-06-2006, 08:10 PM

I might have resolved the problem, running now since 3 hours without a crash - knock on wood ...

Not sure what actually fixed it - the cleanup with Drive Cleaner, the manual install of the CPU-to-AGP Controller driver from the VIA 4in1 package through the DeviceManager, or the reinstall of the Hauppauge drivers (strangely Sage did not detect my tuners any more at some point...)

Thanks to everyone, without your suggestions the 6200 would probably now get dusty in a drawer ...

Well, still cringing on every channel change ...

Dirk

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