I love Sage7 but my HD-PVRs lock up SO MUCH!

[SamVimes2]

Sage 7.0.12 WHS fresh install pp3 nothing else on the box. 1x 150g velociraptor + 1x 500g 7200rpm WD green drive added to the pool. 2 HD-PVRs connected to two SA-8300HDs controlled by PCI FireWire card. HD-PVRs connected to ASUS mobo USB ports. Running the old drivers. RCA l/r audio. All the equipment lives in a rack, with a vornado on high pointed directly at it for the moment.

Lockups at least twice per day. Worse than Sage6. How can I get it to work better?

In all other ways I love sage7.

[Spectrum]

Does it generate errors in Sage, just stop working, freeze the system? What are the exact symptoms of your lockups? What driver version are you using? Have you tried hwclear to be sure all Hauppauge drivers have been removed from the system? Does it work if just using one HDPVR?

Need a bit more info to help with the troubleshooting

[mtyme]

I haven't tried Sage7 beta yet, but from reading the forum, it seems the consensus is with Sage7, you should be running the newest drivers, not the old drivers like you did with Sage6. There's a giant thread on here somewhere about HD-PVR and Sage7 stability, it's worth finding and reading on everyone's experiances.

[SamVimes2]

I get the yellow errors about failed to start and then the red errors about total failure. System doesn't lock up, HDHR continues to record properly. What would I use hwclear for - I need the drivers!

I haven't tested with 1 HD-PVR. I'd like 2 to work, and I'd love to upgrade to optical audio, but I'll sacrifice the latter for stability.

I am running the older drivers 1.0.5.301, based on what I read in the stability thread. There seems to be no concensus at all - some people report that various voodoo works for them, others report that the same voodoo makes their problem worse.

From the thread, I've gleaned some things I could try:
-updating drivers
-taping over IR ports
-power conditioning
-separate USB card
-something i can't find now about deleting old USB devices

Does anyone have two HD-PVRs working stably in V7? What's the secret?

[dadof4]

Things are not always as they seem.

I upgraded to Ver 7 and at the same time one of my HD-PVR's started to act up. It was not showing as installed in device manager. I reloaded the drivers and the problem was corrected. This happened several times until reloading the drivers did not correct the issue. I called Hauppauge and received a replacement. With the replacement I was receiving a "No Video" error in Sage. I tried everyting with no success. I called Hauppauge and they sent a replacement for the replacement! Problems solved. I have not had an HD-PVR hiccup in a month.

All of this started happening immediately after the Ver 7 install. I originally blamed it on the beta sofware. That was not the case.

Things are not always as the seem.

[Peter_h]

I have been running sage7 since the very first beta release with 2 HDPVR's.

I have had 1 lockup, total in the last 3 months or so that sage7 has been in beta. Otherwise, the boxes and setup has been extremely stable.

Prior to Sage7, I had one HDPVR that never locked up and the other locked up about 1 time a month.

I'm positive the box that still locks up is an issue with the box and not with sagetv.

This has also been stated many times on the forums. There are actual hardware problems with the HD-PVR boxes. I wouldn't go pointing the finger at sagetv7.

[Spectrum]

It really sounds like you have bad hardware or driver issues. Running hwclear and trying one HDPVR are just troubleshooting steps to determine what is wrong and get to a fix. The devices and drivers are so problematic there is no way any one of us can say do 1,2,3 and your problems will magically go away.

With that in mind, what I would suggest at this point is following the steps outlined here and only reinstall one HDPVR. Now if you don't have problems you know you have a good device and you can add the other HDPVR to the mix, if you still have problems do the procedure over again with the other HDPVR and see what happens. If neither works you either have 2 bad devices or there is something else going on.

Troubleshooting is a process of elimination to figure out what is wrong, there are no magic bullets

[freedml]

Let me suggest one more step. Get one box working, then swap it with the other box (same setup) before trying two at the same time.

[dezekiel]

The best thing I did to cut down the lock-ups on my HD-PVR was to buy a USB-UIRT and use it to receive my IR commands. When the HD-PVR does not have to deal with receiving and blasting IR remote codes it got a lot more stable for me. I bought a USB to Serial cable to change channels on my Directv box or you can use one of the two USB-UIRT's blaster ports. Do a search for all the details.

Dana