How stable is your system?

[ErsatzTom]

If I sleep sage on my 3 tuner server it invariably locks up the app. Occasionally I'll do something in Sage while the gui is active that locks it up. I haven't any idea what the problem is. It seems that if I minimize rather than sleep the server it is much more stable. This is under w2k w/ everything clean install and latest updates. The interesting thing is that I got the same symptoms with a different motherboard/cpu/memory. The tuner cards are the same and the os was basically the same but clean (reformat) install for each. Right now I'm just sort of working around the problem...

t

[olyar15]

I have been running Sage on my HTPC for months now, with the machine running 24/7. I never had a lockup that I could attribute to SageTV. I can't even recall the last time I saw a blue screen, or had the machine lock up. I had to reboot a few months ago because my DVD player software was starting to get a bit jerky, which the reboot cleared up. Other than that (and a sound card that died), my HTPC has been rock stable.

I'm running XP on a P2.4B, Asus 845-based motherboard, fanless ATI Radeon 9000 vid card, 2 80Gb hard drives, AP2496 sound card, in a quiet HTPC case. In addition to Sage, I regularly use Theatertek, Media Center 9.1, WMP, web browsing, and my fish screensaver.

[gplasky]

Tom
I recently rebuilt my Sage TV server. Different MB and new case. 2 tuner.-PVR250. Athlon XP2500+, 1GB RAM. 300GB SATA RAID 0. OS om 60GB PATA drive.I lately have the problem that after around 24 hours Sage just locks up like yours. The PC doesn't lock-just Sage. I have a SageTV client so when I try to access the Guide it sits there for the longest time. Sometimes it comes back and says the server is disconnected. When I go to the server Sage will not come out of sleep. I've checked all system error logs and nothing. I was starting to think it was a temp problem but according to the BIOS it is 39 degrees. I'm getting ready to do a fresh reload. Any ideas?


Gerry

Just remembered. I converted the GeForce FX5200 video to a fanless design with a huge Zalman heat sink. If the video card was overheating would it just affect Sage or wouldn't it also affect the whole PC?

[cassis6]

I also have Sage locking up from time to time. This is happening only since I added a second PVR-250 (both are 250-16).

Most of the cases are when Sage is sleeping and some recordings have been done, the PC itself is fine.
Some but very infrequent lock-ups happened when playing with the 2.5 min skip forward/backward very fast.

If I kill the Sage process and restarts Sage, it usually locks-up again right away when trying to watch a recorded show. Rebooting the PC is the only remedy.

Otherwise Sage is working great (PQ & all)

[aglennon]

I have been running a dual 250 setup for about 9 months. I only reboot about once every 1-2 months and I only do so because I like to flush things out once in a while. I have never had a lockup, blue screen, reboot, crash or missed recording. It is more stable then I would have expected.

[justme]

I been using Sage for over 6 monthes and it has gone as long as 3 weeks without a reboot. Like many above the reboot was because of me adding/changing some other software or Windows Update. I can't remember Sage ever crashing Windows, though I have had Sage crash(mainly when tweaking) but nothing recectly. I've used this system as a single tuner(PVR250) system for over 5 of those monthes. I just recently added a second PVR250 and it has been working great as well. I have just bought a PVR350 and would put it in this box but I have a VIA chipset(eck) so I got a new Intel based motherboard to run all 3 cards in a new HTPC.

If you use WinXP and remove unneeded services(Blackviper/XPlite), I do this on any of my systems though. Use a seperate recording partition formatted to 64k and tell sage to leave a little slack space. Then I think you'll have a remarkably stable system. As for the mixed PVR chipset thing I've only recently had a chance to test my mixed system and even then for a short time. I'd say if you want to use a 350 to play it safe and get 15 style 250s, just in case. Personally I'd aviod VIA chipsets like the plague. Oh, and NO PC should be without a UPC, you'd be suprised how bad the electric system probably is in your area. I got a APC one for 5$ after rebate that runs my machine for about 3 minutes. This gets me thru most outages and if not the system properly shuts down after one minute.

[davey_fl]

I've been running Sage for 2 months now and it was stable up until last night. I've never had a problem with PQ, sound etc. But last night my sound started popping and the picture would (every couple of minutes) go completely scrambled for just a few frames and then back to normal. If that didn't happen it would garble some of the picture of have this crazy matrix effect. None of this made the wife very happy while trying to watch CSI. I have no idea what caused this and I suppose I'm going to have to try a re-install to get rid of it. I haven't made any changes to the system. I'm running a single pvr-250 on an nforce chipset and I do have my recording drive formatted with 64k blocks and all unneeded services disabled.

davey

[hubick]

I have stability issues with my 350 as well.
Generally, I get total system lockups... everything freezes, even the mouse, requiring a hard reset.
In 6 months of use, I have never returned to the computer to find it locked up... it has always been during playback. I do not, however, ever recall a lockup without the hardware output enabled. Not doing anything too fast seems to help - using the GUI quickly or jumping around too fast is bad. Recently I may have noticed several lockups occurring moments (up to 2 minutes I think) before the hour...while I was in watching something else - this also seems to have resulted in some corrupt mpg's in my recordings listing which have refused to play - the first frame comes up on screen and then freezes, not allowing the transport controls to work. Actually, I think frequency of problems might correlate somewhat with when I was watching something with something else recording in the background. And on another note, disabling software decoding caused such frequent lockups as to be unusable.

PVR 350, Asus mbd w Intel P3-733 and Intel Chipset. Recentish drivers.

[bisbjerg]

I experience the exact same probs as hubick with my system.
Intel Pentium III 667 MHz, Intel chipset, PVR-350 using TV-OUT.
I hope Frey addresses this issue in SageTV 2.0, as I'm planning on using the TV-OUT for OSD in 2.0.

[Watter]

Originally posted by bisbjerg
I hope Frey addresses this issue in SageTV 2.0, as I'm planning on using the TV-OUT for OSD in 2.0.

I would be hesitant to implicate Frey as the culprit in this matter. While SageTV certainly could be the one causing problems, I've had enough issues with crappy hauppauge drivers over the years to feel that they may be the cause of this problem.

-Watter

[bisbjerg]

Not placing responsibilities here, but Frey must carry more relational weight regarding Hauppauge, than I as a private user

[cmalinowski]

I have sageTV running in the basement with a pvr-250 on a 1ghz pent III with 512mb and a 250gb hd under XP-pro. Upstairs (wired network), I have a new dell 2400 2.4ghz running the client and recorder with a 350 using the tv-out with 256mb and xp-home.

On occasion, I get a lockup when fast forwarding through a recorded video (it might happen with buffered live tv too, I can't remember the exact scenario). Anyway, it's happened twice. I will just move a little more slowly and see what happens.

My thought is that the tv-out on the 350 gets off-timed with the computer/sage, and then confusion happens and it just locks up.

Since I have a monitor just above the TV, I've noticed that the timing between the output to the monitor and to the tv-out is not consistent. Sometimes it is right on, sometimes it is a fraction of a second off. I don't know if this is a culprit/symptom/clue, but...

Chris

[jptaz]

I have had a SageTV System running continuosly, 24 x 7, since I installed 1.2.8 back in May. I have only had a few times where SageTV had problems and I have not had any problems since I installed 1.4. I have 3 PVR 250s on the main system and the network Encoder and Client have been very reliable except for the disconnect problems on the client which is a minor annoyance that should be fixed in 2.0

[cmalinowski]

So far, I am comfortable with the stability even with the couple of lockups. Since those happened while I was doing something, it was not a major setback. If the machine locked up and didn't record a show I wanted, then we're talking about having issues. I want to have sage run flawlessly for a bit before I cut off my Tivo service though. If nothing else, tivo seems pretty darned stable.

Chris

[R_Andersen]

I've also been having stability problems with SageTV recently. I'm running an AMD 1ghz with 512MB ram. The system had been running perfectly with up-times of over 3 weeks before I added a new 160GB Maxtor hard drive. Since I added the drive the system now freezes frequently while fast forwarding or rewinding. I probably have to reboot every other day at this point. I'm thinking this may be a heat issue with the new drive, but I haven't had time to verify yet.

-Rob

[sudipto]

I have been using SageTV for little over two months now, and it has been rock solid for me. I have gone for weeks before rebooting ... and that too not due to Sage, but due to other necessities (like reboot after a system patch). I have yet to see my first blue screen on this machine.

Initially I had a ver 16 250 and a ver 15 350 card in there ... and the two wouldn't play nicely; so I went ahead and replaced the v15 350 with another v16 250 and haven't looked back since then. About a month back I added a third tuner card in there, a ver 16 250MCE, and the system is working fine just as before.

I do see occasional problems when I do too much FF or REW ... Sage loses sound if I do this too much using the Hauppauge Remote; but to fix it all I have to do it move the mouse or press any key on the keyboard, and it is back to normal.

The only problem I have seen occasionally, is that some recordings become slightly jerky at times. I don't know if that is attributed to the 3 tuner load, or due to other activities on the system at the same time.

Anyway, here is my system configuration is that helps anyone. I built this system specifically for Sage and have tried to keep the "pollution" with other extraneous software to a minimum

AMD Athlon XP 2600 (1.9GHz "Barton" core)
2 x Crucial 512MB CL2.5 PC2100 RAM
ASUS A7N8X Deluxe v2.0 motherboard
1- WinTV PVR 250 v16
1- WinTV PVR 250 v16
1- WinTV PVR 250MCE v16
2 x 200GB drives with 8MB cache
Sufficient cooling, my CPU temp is around 35c idle and 40-42c under load
380w Antec quiet power supply

The common theme here seems to be almost everyone using 350 (and TV out) is seeing unstability, whereas most same version 250 systems are stable.

[rkn555]

not too stable (client that is)
did a search here for my problem and found that someone else posted same problem back in july2003. and there were no follow up posts.
so, here goes. when i run the client and use the fast forward... like "clikclik" more than 1 or twice back to back video freezes up.
i have to go into task manager and Kill process. it spikes my cpu up to 98%.
hopefully someone can help

[Chilli]

I have stability problems with my 350 too. I suspect the Hauppauge drivers are the root of the problem here. Is there anyone out there using the 350 (and TV out) without the unstability issues? I'll be happy to try out the drivers.

[snipeman]

I'm having Sage freezes without me using it. I'll turn on the TV after waking up, and Sage will be frozen. All in all, I'd say it's done a lot of random strange things.

I'm running a 350, with TV out DISABLED, Sage 1.41 and XP Pro.

I've done a lot of the suggestions here, 64K blocks, leave a little HD space free, overlay on etc.

[cmalinowski]

RE: "leave a little HD space free"

Oh yea, that is a killer. When I first got sageTV, I left it up in full-screen mode like my Tivo. It recorded everything until it ran out of disk space and froze with an error box (or question) on the screen. Now I know to put it into sleep mode.