Hard Lockup/Semi Trashed Windows

[Diego Garcia]

AMD 64x2 3800
2GB RAM
Several terabytes storage
Win7 32 bit
ATI 4350 video card
USBUIRT
HDPVR (internal IR blaster enabled)
Sage 6.6

Last night at the end of watching a video recorded earlier by my HDPVR, the playback froze and a loud buzzing sound appeared. This went on for about five or ten seconds, after which the picture remained frozen and my computer system froze rock-solid: no response to IR, mouse, keyboard.

I eventually was reduced to cycling the power, but the system refused to boot. Cycling the power again dumped me into a Windows "boot fix" system, which was unable to find anything wrong.

Rebooting the system again got me part way into Windows (desktop background and taskbar appeared, but the mouse cursor was locked into a spinning/wait state).

Rebooting the system one more time got me cleanly into Windows. Sage came up, and appears to be working.

In all the years I've run Sage I've never encountered this...which makes me suspect my newly-installed HDPVR is somehow to blame. Besides, it's easy to blame, since it's so darn flaky!

Has anyone else run into this? Any ideas on what's causing it?

[Tiki]

Since you say you were playing back a previously recorded file when this happened, it seems unlikely that the capture device was to blame (unless you were also recording something at the same time)...

I have seen that a glitch in a video file can cause your video card to lock up (due to a buggy video card driver or mpeg codec). I think this is more likely to happen if you are using hardware acceleration of some sort. Depending on the combination of video card driver and operating system, it may eventually auto-recover or you may be forced to re-boot your PC. But, I have not seen that sort of problem force you to re-boot twice...

By chance did you try playing back that same recording again? Did it play OK the 2nd time, or did it fail again in the same spot?

Another possibility is flakey RAM or another hardware problem with your PC. Sometimes a failing power supply or bad capacitors on your motherboard around the voltage regulator circuits can cause all kinds of weirdness. Heat is another possible culprit (do you monitor the temperature inside your case, or in your hard drives?). There are some free programs available for monitoring your PC's internal temperature and also for testing your RAM memory.

If it just happened the one time, you might be able to write it off as a "glitch". But if it happens repeatedly, this may give you some places to check.

[Diego Garcia]

Oops, I should've mentioned that the hard lockup took place while the HDPVR was recording something. In fact, as I recall, it started acting a little flaky -- the blue lights signifying a recording in progress started cycling on and off -- although that could've been the result of the computer locking up.

[hechacker1]

Download Prime 95 and run the balanced stress test to test your RAM and CPU.

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownloa...oad-76537.html

Let it run for about 15 minutes to make sure your computer is stable.

I would also update your video card driver to the latest version. I've seen my ATI catalyst driver lock up the entire system when trying to play video because of a EVR bug. Luckily the drivers have fixed it since then.

[davephan]

Can you recover back to a past C-drive image? If so, this will help isolate if the problem is hardware or software related. If you don't have an image, then you may have to manually rebuild to determine if it is hardware or software problem. If it is a software problem, you are 30 minutes away from resolving the problem with an image.

Since you have the system working now, you could also monitor the computer for the problem to re-occur. However, it can be helpful to get your software back to a known-good state in the past.

Dave

[ccsmoke]

I agree hechacker1, however I would prime 95 at least 24 hrs straight to make sure the system is indeed stable.

[paulbeers]

You aren't running McAfree virus scan are you? hehe.

[Ender]

I recently had a similar issue arise, and it was hardware related, but not due to a flaky HDPVR, rather one of my recording drives has decided to die. I had many bad sectors found.

I would suggest doing a surface scan with the diagnostic software of choice on the drive that was being written to, or read from, you just may have a failing drive.