I messed up Sage in WHS - Hockey Playoff Emergency

[Skiier__Dude]

Hey all,

I'm running Sage on WHS and have been doing so with great success for about 3 years now. My playback is almost exclusively via Media Extenders (HD-200). Over the past 2 weeks, Sage has been acting erratic. Extenders would not start up properly and had to be restarted several times. Then video playback started to become extremely choppy.

Last night, I attempted to un-install and re-install Sage. Uninstalled via the Control Panel, rebooted server, re-installed the MSI -- FORGETTING that I should have done the un-install via the WHS Console from the Add-Ins tab.

Now, unfortunately when go into the WHS Console, Sage is still registered in the Add-Ins Installed category. When I try to un-install it, it fails. Given the the version I am trying to re-install is slightly newer than the old one coming out (both versions of 7.x) I can see it in the Add-Ins Available. If I re-install Sage from the Add-Ins Available tab, both versions are listed as installed and when I try to run Media Extenders or Placeshifter clients, the Sage Service crashes.

Is there now a way I can properly remove all installed instances of Sage and get it back up and running again today? Game 2 of the Stanley Cup finals starts in 7 hours

[voorhees]

Have you given the ASoft Addin Cleanup Tool a try? I know others have had good success with it, but I have not tried it myself.

[DMT]

Use regedit and navigate to KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTW
ARE\Microsoft\Windows Home Server\RegisteredAdditions\

You will see something like {215605e1-5c24-498f-a1f9-8367d13cb913} for each add-in. This is what you want to delete. Make sure you highlight the right one (you will see SageTV in the window). Right click to delete. Close the registry editor.

You can now install SageTV through Add-ins via the Windows Home Server Console.

I have had to do this a number of times myself.

[Skiier__Dude]

Well, got the Sage installs removed (thanks for the help on that), but the service won't run. As soon as I start the service from the WHS console the service immediately crashes.

[davephan]

It looks like your in for a painful and slow system rebuild. If you were using an operating system that could be imaged, like Windows 7, then the recovery would take less than 30 minutes. As your discovering, SageTV and WHS is not a good combination if you need to recover quickly.

Dave

[Skiier__Dude]

Damn, my system is still down for the count.

Have submitted a ticket to Sage -- they suggested re-installing Java JRE -- did that without any luck.

The Sage Service crashes as soon as it tries to start. I see it pop-up for about 2-3 seconds in the Task Manager but it immediately crashes.

I've tried installing a few versions of Sage 7 and even went back to my last version of 6 that was successfully installed but none will run any longer.

The entire WAF (and FAF for that matter) that I've built up over the years is currently being reset to zero.

Would appreciate any helpful advice on getting this system working again.

[robogeek]

Couple of ideas...

Have you altered the JVM Heap Size registry setting recently or have you taken any RAM out of your server machine or have you installed any other memory hogging programs or WHS addins recently? Is yes to any, try reducing the JVM Heap Size registry setting. This instant crash on startup is usually caused by the JVM crashing due to not having enough contiguous RAM to allocate based on your JVM Heap Size setting.

If the JVM Heap Size isn't the problem, do you have SageTV debug logging enabled? If so, does the log give any clues? If you don't have debug logging enabled, open the sage.properties file in the SageTV program directory and find the debug_logging property and change it to debug_logging=true and then try starting SageTV. After it crashes, check for the sagetv_0.txt log file in the SageTV program directory and see if it gives any clues about where it's crashing during startup.

[gplasky]

Try this:
If you have installed the latest java rename the jre folder in SageTV to jreold. (With the SageTV service stopped.) This way Sage will use your latest java install instead of the runtime that gets installed with the WHS version. If WHS needs to access any network resources (other machines) make sure you have a user ID with a password that has access to those other machines. Make sure they have Administrator permisions. Also make sure your WHS install has ALL the patches and Power Packs installed.

Gerry

[Skiier__Dude]

So made some headway last night.

I uninstalled all instances of Java and JRE. Found a version of Java 2.x still installed on the machine and removed it. Rebooted and then installed the latest JRE again.

Sage now starts and I can watch shows once again.

I'm beginning to think one of the 4 SATA disks in the system has somehow gotten corrupted. I ran a chkdsk and it corrected a number of bad blocks.

I'm using the Western Digital DataLifeguard tools on the disks now and I have isolated the disk with the bad blocks. Taking it out of service to see if it can be repaired -- or may end up having to RMA it.