HD-PVR Stops Responding ~Once/Day

[wolfie99]

I had the same problem last night. Noticed that my WHS backup start at midnight. I changed to 1 A.M. Will see what happens.

[ewelin]

my backups are schedule from 2am to 5am...

are you on DTV?

[wolfie99]

nope, Expressvu (Canada). They are the same receivers as dish.

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by ewelin

I've been toying with that idea... I just hate to see my HD-PVRs go down at that hour. All of our TV watching is done over the HD-PVRs and if they go down at midnight, we may miss a few minutes of a sports game if it's going long. If that happen, it definitely would not go over well with the wife. LMAO. I wouldn't mind so much if the reset was at 4am as the odds of us watching TV at that hour is basically 0.

Well if they are going to crash at 12:01 at least this way you know they will come back online. Obviously the better solution is to fix the problem, but this is a good work around for the moment.

[Skirge01]

12:01 is the default time for WHS to do it's balancing. If this is causing issues with your HD-PVR's, then I think there may be a bigger problem, such as insufficient disk space, disk bandwidth, or an insufficient CPU or memory. I'm grasping at what the cause might be, but trying to throw some ideas out there. I know my WHS box has no problems recording during the balancing.

[ewelin]

well there goes that 12:01 theory... just crashed at 10pm :-( Unit 1 locked up.

[ewelin]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

12:01 is the default time for WHS to do it's balancing. If this is causing issues with your HD-PVR's, then I think there may be a bigger problem, such as insufficient disk space, disk bandwidth, or an insufficient CPU or memory. I'm grasping at what the cause might be, but trying to throw some ideas out there. I know my WHS box has no problems recording during the balancing.

I would hope that's not the case... it's a 2.2GHz dual core with 4GB ram and over 4TB of free diskspace currently.

From your signature it looks like you're two HD-PVR, what drivers are you on?

[eric3a]

I've had 2 HDPVRs for a while now and after much testing (I have training in fault finding/electrical-electronic fault tracing), I have tried all the various weird ideas out there.
Tape on the ir receiver,
Gestion of heat,
Various drivers,
separate usb (NEC based) card,
power on UPS, direct from wall,
3 RMAs
... name it. if it's been suggested on a board, I've tested it.

I got so used to having lock-ups I wrote a "lock-up" recovery script triggered by SageAlert, and that's been working great to cope with the problem.

I have reached the conclusion that HDPVRs require special Voodoo to work.

Somehow I appear to have found that Voodoo recently, when I once again went back to an old driver I had tried before (1.0.5.301). But this time I've had no lock-ups for 2 weeks. Way more than ever before.

I see no reason why my latest driver downgrade is any different than earlier ones, but so far so good.
I made a separate backup of this setup, different from my routine backups.

Sorry I can't pinpoint WHAT made my setup work.
Voodoo isn't easy to replicate!

Eric

[ewelin]

Originally Posted by eric3a

Voodoo isn't easy to replicate!

I'm starting to reach that conclusion as well. :-(

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by eric3a

I got so used to having lock-ups I wrote a "lock-up" recovery script triggered by SageAlert, and that's been working great to cope with the problem.

I have reached the conclusion that HDPVRs require special Voodoo to work.

Eric

Care to share your work? Perhaps start a new "How To" thread and walk through the process. That sounds like a very creative solution that would probably work for a lot of people. But it would take me forever to figure out all the moving parts to make it work.

[eric3a]

Just search for my post in the "SageAlert" thread.
I've improved the scripts since, but you'll have a start on how it's done there.
Eric

[gplasky]

One of the things you may want to make sure of is the wayt you upgrade\downgrade your drivers. It is NOT sufficient or correct to just "Update driver" from device manager and point it at the folder that contains the new drivers. Make sure you always run the hwinstaller.exe (Or whatever it is called) and the actual update application runs. This may be part of the issue for some users. I recall doing it wrong once on a WHS reinstall and was actual able to have BSOD with the HD-PVR. Redoing the drivers correctly stopped that issue immediately.

Gerry

[ewelin]

Yup, I had worse experienced when not upgrading the drivers correctly... My process is to:

• run the hwclear.exe
• then unplug the units
• restart
• once the system is up, I plug in the units and wait for the windows asking for the driver. At that point I run the HcwDriverInstall.exe
• restart again to make sure both devices still exist and no conflicts.

[Chriscic]

"IT'S THE HARDWARE STUPID"

Not that anyone here is stupid, just wanted to use the catchphrase

I continue to believe it's defective units (and there's a lot of them out there) that are causing so much trouble. RMA at least one of your quirky units, then try it by iteself and see if the lock-ups don't cease.

Of course there's no guarantee that Hauppauge will send you a good replacement unit, but as much as they have their heads up their you know whats hopefully they've improved the hardware over time.

Good luck! A working system with working HD-PVRs is a beautiful thing.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by Chriscic

"IT'S THE HARDWARE STUPID"

Not that anyone here is stupid, just wanted to use the catchphrase

I continue to believe it's defective units (and there's a lot of them out there) that are causing so much trouble. RMA at least one of your quirky units, then try it by iteself and see if the lock-ups don't cease.

Of course there's no guarantee that Hauppauge will send you a good replacement unit, but as much as they have their heads up their you know whats hopefully they've improved the hardware over time.

Good luck! A working system with working HD-PVRs is a beautiful thing.

Maybe just the 5V 3A power adapters are defective... and we are all working the wrong end of the power cord ?

[eric3a]

"IT'S THE HARDWARE STUPID"

Not in my case. 3 RMAs all failed in similar fashion (audio getting more and more out of sync until lock up at minute 50 of a recording).
And now without any further hardware change, the very units that used to lockup have been stable for 2 weeks after a simple driver downgrade. To a driver I had already tried before.

I am familiar with quirky Hauppauge drivers, so always use hwclear before any driver change.

Maybe just the 5V 3A power adapters are defective... and we are all working the wrong end of the power cord ?

I doubt but from observation I'd say the 5V 2A power supplies of later units might produce less lock-ups. But then could be a pure coincidence. I didn't use the 3A for long.

Both my -now stable- units have 5V 2A supplies.

Still with all the suggestions and suppositions I have not found a reproducible single point failure.
Maybe we're talking about more failures (2 or 3), making the troubleshooting very difficult, but for the time being I'll continue to invoke "Voodoo" until someone comes up with a demonstrable and repeatable failure mode and solution.

Eric

[jerryt]

@ Ewelin

Would you test something for me?

When one of your HD-PVR's locks up, see if removing and reconnecting the USB unlocks the HD-PVR.

Thanks

[btrcp2000]

I'm starting to blame my usb-uirt. I am getting lots of "halt detected" alerts, but if I go into sage video source setup, the hdpvr is outputting a signal on channel preview, but I can't change the channel. Test infrared code doesn't work either. unplugging/replugging the usbuirt works, but it has to reinstall every time.

[jerryt]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

I'm starting to blame my usb-uirt. I am getting lots of "halt detected" alerts, but if I go into sage video source setup, the hdpvr is outputting a signal on channel preview, but I can't change the channel. Test infrared code doesn't work either. unplugging/replugging the usbuirt works, but it has to reinstall every time.

Verify that you have the latest drivers;
http://www.usbuirt.com/support.htm

Add ferrite beads;
http://65.36.202.170/phpBB2/viewtopi...2aadf4892513bb

USBUIRT Restart batch file;
http://65.36.202.170/phpBB2/viewtopi...2aadf4892513bb

[Taddeusz]

As long as the voltage is sufficient the amperage of a power supply shouldn't matter as long as it can produce enough current to supply the device. A device only uses as much current as it requires. A 5V 3A power supply will produce current of 5V up to 3A. If a device uses less than 3A the power supply only supplies the needed current. Conversely, if a device requires more than 3A either the device will not work properly or the power supply will fail, or both.

This is the reason we have light bulb sockets with maximum wattages. Sockets are designed with a maximum current carrying capacity. If you exceed the maximum by installing a higher wattage light bulb you risk burning up the socket.