ODD Lock Up issue

[megaboz]

I have 3 PVR 150 cards and a 2250 card. I have completely (everything but the huge powersupply powering this beast) rebuilt my system (because the old one was over 5 years old) due to intermittant crashes/reboots. I have swapped out every old TV Tuner card (since they were not replaced) and still cannot figure out why the system is locking up (with the new system it only locks up, it doesn't reboot).

The problem only seems to happen when recording 2 or more shows and watching a live show at the same time therough an Media MVP. It will go about 10 to 20 minutes then it just locks up.

I've ran out of ideas on why it is locking up and the only thing I feel that is left is that it must be software related, what software, I don't have a clue.

So my question is does anyone have anything that I can run that would monitor the hardware/software that might log an instance of it blowing up before it locks. Or for that matter any ideas on what might be causing the problem? IRQ conflicts?

I'm out of my own ideas and could really use a hand. My wife suggested we just get a cable company DVR.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by megaboz

I have 3 PVR 150 cards and a 2250 card. I have completely (everything but the huge powersupply powering this beast) rebuilt my system (because the old one was over 5 years old) due to intermittant crashes/reboots.

Is the power supply also 5+ years old? They go bad too. If you don't have a power supply tester, you can order one from newegg & others.

- Andy

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by megaboz

I have 3 PVR 150 cards and a 2250 card. ...

You might try a re-install of these drivers. Only install 1 at a time, cancel the second, reboot, and then install the second. I remember something like this with the older cards mixed with the 2250, maybe. (No longer have any old cards in my systems)

Also, like Andy said, get that power supply replaced. Even a ripple one a single supple can crash a machine. (reason I almost always buy a HQ P/S)

[megaboz]

Originally Posted by Opus4

Is the power supply also 5+ years old? They go bad too. If you don't have a power supply tester, you can order one from newegg & others.

- Andy

Originally Posted by MattHelm

You might try a re-install of these drivers. Only install 1 at a time, cancel the second, reboot, and then install the second. I remember something like this with the older cards mixed with the 2250, maybe. (No longer have any old cards in my systems)

Also, like Andy said, get that power supply replaced. Even a ripple one a single supple can crash a machine. (reason I almost always buy a HQ P/S)

I don't think it is the TV cards, I actually just bought the 2250 to try to root out the bad tv card, turns out I still have the issue.

And I would have told you were nuts on the Power SUpply if it wasn't for the fact that I have a UPS that is very sensitive to sudden power spikes, and it seems that when the unit locks up, I can hear the UPS switch back and forth. But it is a cheap part to try, so I will defintiely try it as everything else has been ruled out other than software glitches.

Thanks for putting the PS in my mind, I kept telling myself it can't be it or it wouldn't work all the time. I guess since it was a large(800W)/efficient PS that it would have plenty of power to keep the little DVR running. Since I am not exactly sure how old it is, it would be worth trying.

Thanks Again.

[megaboz]

Ok, so I tried replacing the power supply, same issue when more than 2 cards are recording. The computer just freezes up during playback on the MVP.

So everything is new but the 3 Hauppauge 150 cards. I have swapepd each of them out, so unless they are all bad, there is something amiss.

Can anyone tell me with a similar setup what driver version they are running?

[zoundz]

One thing to look at is the possibility of a SATA interface problem. I had a situation where the SATA chipset on one of my MB's was just totally unhappy with Seagate SATA 300 drives. The resulting symptom was a system lockup during times of heavy disk usage. Only happened on the 500GB Seagate. There were entries in the system event log that showed the failure starting just before the crash. Subsequent googling produced information about that particular SATA chipset (SIS IIRC) and switching the system to IDE drives totally eliminated the failures.

Just a possibility.

[SteveD]

Originally Posted by zoundz

One thing to look at is the possibility of a SATA interface problem. I had a situation where the SATA chipset on one of my MB's was just totally unhappy with Seagate SATA 300 drives. The resulting symptom was a system lockup during times of heavy disk usage. Only happened on the 500GB Seagate. There were entries in the system event log that showed the failure starting just before the crash. Subsequent googling produced information about that particular SATA chipset (SIS IIRC) and switching the system to IDE drives totally eliminated the failures.

Just a possibility.

There were some firmware updates for some of the 500 gig seagate sata drives to address the drive turning into a brick. I had 3 of them and had to update them.

[SteveD]

Originally Posted by megaboz

I have 3 PVR 150 cards and a 2250 card. I have completely (everything but the huge powersupply powering this beast) rebuilt my system (because the old one was over 5 years old) due to intermittant crashes/reboots. I have swapped out every old TV Tuner card (since they were not replaced) and still cannot figure out why the system is locking up (with the new system it only locks up, it doesn't reboot).

The problem only seems to happen when recording 2 or more shows and watching a live show at the same time therough an Media MVP. It will go about 10 to 20 minutes then it just locks up.

I've ran out of ideas on why it is locking up and the only thing I feel that is left is that it must be software related, what software, I don't have a clue.

So my question is does anyone have anything that I can run that would monitor the hardware/software that might log an instance of it blowing up before it locks. Or for that matter any ideas on what might be causing the problem? IRQ conflicts?

I'm out of my own ideas and could really use a hand. My wife suggested we just get a cable company DVR.

Can you give some specs on your hardware?
What is your signal source?
Can you playback on the server without any issues?
Did you do a fresh install of sage or copy the sagetv directory over and reinstall during your migration to the new system. If you copied and reinstalled, I would rename the sage.properties and delete the sage.properties backup file and configure sage again.( Remember sage cannot be running when you are deleting these files.)
Can you load a client on a laptop(assuming you have one) and start playback on server and client and play for greater than 30 minutes. Load the server up with as many clients/laptop as you have available. Forget the MVPS. These are tests to see if the server is stable under a load, and get the MVP out of the picture. Replace Client with playshifter(closer to the function of the MVP) on laptop and test again. Do the tests wired and not wireless. Using the trial.


For the wife: At least $5.00 a month rental fee, no commerical skipping, can't build your personal library of favorite shows and keep if forever. Limited storage space, just to name a few of the limitations of the company DVR.

The problem can be resolved.

Just a few suggestions.

[megaboz]

WD Caviar 500GB Serial ATA HD 7200/16MB/SATA-3G
Ultra LSP550 550-Watt Power Supply - ATX, SATA-Ready, SLI-Ready, 135mm Fan, Lifetime Warranty w/ Registration
Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 Dual TV Tuner / Encoder 1229 PCI-Express x1 Interface - OEM
SPARKLE SX84GS256D2LDPP GeForce 8400 GS 256MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Low Profile Ready Video Card
G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10600CL9D-4GBNT
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5400 Wolfdale 2.7GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80571E5400
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5400 Wolfdale 2.7GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor BX80571E5400
Intel BOXDP43BF LGA 775 Intel P43 ATX Intel Motherboard

All hardware listed above is BRAND NEW. I also have 4 pvr 150 cards, I used one to try to find the bad one, didn't work, so either they are all bad, or none of them.

I have not tried connecting with the server using other clients, but Have had issues when accessing shared drives on the maching causing the same issue on the old system (so far don't seem to have that issue, old system was an IDE Pentium Celeron. I also had the same exact issues with the old system except that it would sometimes would reboot instead of just locking up. Kinda why I thought it was hardware. The PVR's are 4+ years old.

I only seem to have issues when recording 2 or more shows and watching live tv, pre-recorded shows work without a problem.

I also lately been noticing that I seem to be getting shows taping for like 6 hours when they should only be for an hour. Got me on that one. I also have some shows that record the whole show, but Sage thinks it is only about a minute long. Again, got me on that one. I can live with those issues, but the lock ups are getting on my nerves.

Also, the current system only writes to one drive, the old system used to write to two different drives, so I am not sure if the drives would have anything to do with the problems.

I have had this system for several years, and only in the last year have I had the reboot/lockup issue.

[megaboz]

Well, as I have played and played with this, I think it is related to the quality selection (I believe the 2.0 gig/hr) is the issue. Which also may be related to the issue someone mentionabout too much hard drive activity.

Dunno, will keep posting if I ever find something definitive!

[megaboz]

I was really hoping that someone would have an answer or at least tell me that the have similar issues, but as an update, I have tried the new power supply, it doesn't help.

The problems actually seem to extend and get worse over time. Now some of my recordings appears to be getting the header of the files corrupted, they will play for 10 seconds and then prompt for deletion because it has reached the end of the recording. However, selecting not to delete and then selecting play will play the rest of the video, but if you try to ship ahead it will reset to the beginning of the file (I'm guessing that this is due to the way the skip logic works.), but Fast Forwarding at 4x things seem rather normal. I amactualy experiencing this on all the video cards, so I think, well I don't know what to think.

The lock up issue seems to be stemming from using the Media MVP to watch Live TV while recording, actually the problem actually occurs when it goes to record something, at the time a new recording is to start, it will lock up the machine. If I never watch Live TV, it never locks up the computer.

I have replaced everything but the TV Tuners (even the case, I know it would have nothing to do with it, but I needed more room for air flow), I have also cycled the tuners out one by one, and the only thing that seems to help is to extend the time to a little bit longer between lock-ups. But even now I am beginning to think it isn't the TV Tuners because of when the lock ups occur.

I really need some help or some ideas, or maybe even where to get older versions of Sage TV because I never had this issue when I was using about 5 or 6 versions back.